Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord
by rewind gone nuts
Summary: When Ranma is transported to the Pit of the Infernum, he is forced to leave his old life behind. Desperate as he may be to find a way back to Earth, he must embrace the darkness in order to survive. And if he does find an exit... will he want to leave?
1. Chapter 1

**Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Infernum or any related characters in any way, shape or form. This work contains themes that may offend – reader discretion is advised._

**Author's Notes:** This series began as a mere whim, an idle daydream that eventually culminated in a oneshot giving a rough outline of the 'ascension' of Ranma Saotome through the ranks of House Lictat after an accidental disjunction into the Hell of the Infernum RPG setting. But that oneshot proved amazingly popular, to the extent that others from the same hypothetical setting were requested. At last, I decided to admit that there were grounds here for a fullblown serial, and set to work charting Ranma's climb to his demonic throne.

Prelude: Plunge Into The Abyss

The streets of Nerima were filled with many people, the vast majority of which were perfectly ordinary, normal civilians, just going about their average daily lives. But, as always, there was that minority whose lives were anything but average, and whom the other people would deem quite abnormal indeed. And of those people, Ranma Saotome was considered an exemplar.

But all was not right in Nerima; a person who observed Ranma would notice that he was roaming aimlessly and listlessly, without his usual energy. Another martial artist would have actually mistaken Ranma to be Ryoga in a good mood if they had relied on sensing his aura to distinguish his identity- the amount of raw sorrow in him was very unusual. Oh, he wasn't weeping, or hating life, or anything like that- he was just quite firmly down in the dumps… rather unusual, considering how optimistic and cheerful Ranma usually was- even when angry, he usually found a way to turn that into motivation for petty trickery and cruel practical jokes on his enemy. So for him to be moping like this… well, it wasn't an ordinary thing with Ranma.

The reason behind this depression was simple; today was the day of Ranma's 17th birthday, and so far as he knew, nobody seemed to remember or even care about it. Not even Nabiki had picked up the obvious hints behind why he was asking if they knew what the date was, and he hadn't bothered to waste his time with Ukyo or Shampoo; given how little time he had actually spent with either of them, the possibility that they would even know he had a birthday was minute at best. If the girls that Genma intended to be Ranma's sisters-in-law and fiancée, respectively, had no clue what today was, then what chance did they have?

A more reasonable observer could have pointed out that there was no way that the Tendos could have known, given that Ranma was as secretive as a miserly oyster with a pearl, but Ranma wasn't always the most reasonable of people. His likely counter would have been that their father would have learned about today from **his** father, and they would have learned from their father. Speaking of fathers, it was perhaps Genma's fault more than anything that Ranma was as depressed as he was. While Genma would never win "Father of the Year", he hadn't been some kind of heartless monster; he had **always** remembered when it was Ranma's birthday on their training trip, often being better at it then Ranma himself was, and though their choice of activities probably wouldn't impress a more grounded kid, they had always managed to find a way to celebrate it together.

Ranma probably would have been less hurt than he was if Genma **had** forgotten what today signified to Ranma. The younger Saotome had eavesdropped on his father talking to Soun Tendo about today being Ranma's birthday… and excitedly going on about how this meant that the strength of the Saotome/Tendo arrangement was increasing. Very soon, there would be no real legal barriers keeping them from simply dragging Akane and Ranma to the altar and forcing them to marry. Hurt by this betrayal, Ranma had left the house, roaming through the streets in what was partially an effort to forget about his sorrows and partially a sulk.

Stopping at random, Ranma looked up to find himself standing in front of a creepy old antiques shop that he had never seen before. Now, given the life Ranma had lived since coming to Nerima, most would have expected him to promptly turn around and go back the way he came from. Instead, after looking through the window at all of the junk inside, Ranma shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and pushed through the door. The odds were slight, he knew that, but there might be a cure here- given some of the other junk that had shown up in stores like this, such as bras with attached ghosts and genuine phoenix eggs, it wasn't impossible. And even if he did just end up unleashing chaos (**again**), it would at least take his mind off of the disappointments of the day. Alright, maybe there was a vindictive part of him that found dark joy in the idea of watching everyone else's day be ruined, but could you really blame him?

Inside, the place looked like just about every other antiques store he'd ever seen in the past; dust and grime and bric-a-brac everywhere. In fact, it was so normal that he began to wonder if maybe he was mistaken and this was just an ordinary antique store, with nothing more magical in it then how the caretaker avoided choking to death on all the dust.

_"Human…"_

Okay, maybe not. Thin metallic whispers were **not** normal, even in Nerima, and Ranma looked around to try and find the source, anticipating having to flee for his life already.

_"Over here, human…"_

Slowly, almost against his will, Ranma followed the voice, finally coming to an isolated shelf housing a… well, Ranma wasn't sure what it was called. He wasn't what you'd call interested in sculpture, so he had no idea what the technical term for a statue depicting a head, without any other part of the body, or even a pedestal to rest on. The fact it clearly included cogs and other clockwork parts, all made from the same bronze as the rest of it, only made things more muddled. Things only got stranger when the clockwork spontaneously activated, the brazen head's eyelids opening to reveal crystalline eyes that focused on Ranma, its metal lips curving into a gentle smile.

_"Hello, human… I've been waiting for you."_

"Me? Who are you? What are you?" Ranma demanded.

_"I have no name, for I am no person. I am a repository of arcane lore, a guide in the arts of magic, and I can feel the magic that lies upon you, that is woven into your very flesh…"_

"The curse!?" Ranma hissed in shock. "You can feel it? Can you get rid of it?"

_"That… I can do. For a price… I have languished in this dingy store for too long. Purchase me, take me to the outside world, and I shall take your troubles from you."_

With that, it closed its lips and shut its eyes, its cogs ceasing to click and whir as it became an inert statue once more, refusing to answer Ranma's demands. Ranma probably should have been more cautious, but it was a proven fact that whenever the possibility of a cure came up, Ranma's good sense went out the window, and his sense of self preservation often went along for the ride. He carried it up to the front counter, where the mildly confused old woman who ran the shop sold it to him cheaply, commenting that she'd never known anyone to be interested in such an "ugly piece of bronze" before. Ranma said not a word about it speaking to him, instead leaving the store as quickly as was polite, then racing off for an isolated alley.

"Alright, you're out again, now, tell me the spell! Tell me what I have to do!" Ranma demanded.

_"Simple enough. I will speak the spell; all you need do is hold me up and allow me to draw upon your energies to power the spell."_

"Deal!" Ranma declared. Finally, after all of the heartache and havoc, all of the humiliation, rage and pain, the curse would be lifted from him once and for all! He raised the statue in near-reverence, listening to it as it began to chant, softly at first, then rising in volume until it seemed to echo like thunder. As the otherworldly words flowed off of its metallic tongue, energy began to pulse and crackle around them, surging wildly until Ranma looked more like a column of ball lightning than a human being. And still the brazen head continued to speak…

And then, the world seemed to drop out from under Ranma's feet. He had the sensation of falling for a long, long time in the span of a minute or so, then tumbled onto his side as though he had merely slipped. The impact didn't bother him- he'd taken much worse in the past. No, what prompted him to jump was something else…

"Cold! Cold-cold-cold-cold-**COLD!!!** Yaah!"

This final exclamation came about when Ranma realized he had just avoided falling off the side of a mountain- in fact, wherever he looked, there seemed to be nothing **but** mountains! Wind that screamed as if in pain and cut to the bone like razor sharp icicles slammed into him from all directions, and the sound of thunder roared off of the stone around him, a terrible storm plainly visible in the sky.

"What the hell? Where are we?" Ranma demanded. _**"You tricked me!"**_ He roared.

The head said nothing, at first. Then, it began to laugh mockingly, going from tiny chuckles to a cacophony that almost drowned out the thunder and the wind. It was still laughing as Ranma hurled it into the void, bouncing off of the cliffs and out of site. Ranma stared after it as it vanished, then clutched his arms around himself, shivering wildly. While he was used to harsh climates, he still needed fundamentals like proper clothing- if he didn't get out of this wind soon, he'd freeze to death, martial artist or not! Picking a relatively level direction, he set off as fast as he could, already feeling the circulation in his limbs dropping.

Normally, Ranma, experienced in the ways of the wild, wouldn't just blunder into a cave. Normally, however, he wouldn't be in what felt like artic conditions without even the slightest form of protection. Fighting with an angry bear would be better then freezing to death! Barely able to feel his extremities now, he stumbled into the welcoming darkness, feeling a wave of heat (at least, that's what it felt like to someone as chilled as him) emanating from the rear of the cave. Desperate for warmth, Ranma lurched towards it, finding the cave continued deeper and deeper into the mountain. As it grew warmer the deeper he went, Ranma continued his spelunking session, aided by the presence of strange, phosphorescent growths on the walls. He was so focused on getting to the warm that he didn't even notice when the descending floor changed into a set of ancient, heavily weathered stairs.

_**The End… And the Beginning…**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Infernum or any related characters in any way, shape or form. This work contains themes that may offend – reader discretion is advised._

**Author's Notes:** well, here's the first chapter; a bit detail heavy, and I apologize for that, but this story will likely require a lot of in-chapter details, as note-based 'explanations' just get unwieldy and this is a more obscure setting (particularly with my own personal tweaks) then, say, Faerun or Krynn. For the curious, the demonic calendar consists of 12 months (in order: Mortis, Oblivis, Carcis, Agony, Lament, Suffering, Ascenis, Vincere, Throne, Inferno, Shadow and Harrowing), each of which consists of 30 days. A day in Hell is 48 hours, consisting of the time it takes for the Morningstar to form in Pandemonium, rise to Emptiness, and then sink back to Pandemonium. This leads to the times of Witching (when the Morningstar is in a higher circle, resulting in a twilight-level of illumination) and False Dawn (a shorter 'second day' when the Morningstar passes back down a circle) in addition to Day and Night.

Chapter One: To Be Damned

**2nd Lament, 766AF**

In the darkness of the earth beneath the Circle of Tempest, there lies a great labyrinth known as the Inferno Line. At the dawn of the demon race, beneath the cruel taskmasters of the First Fallen, untold millions of demonic slaves worked to bore into the existing tunnels and caverns below the screaming mountains that encircled the Pit like a set of stone jaws. Fortresses were quarried into the very mountains, bunkers sunk deep into their roots, arsenals concealed beneath miles of bedrock, defensive fortifications erected amidst the sheer peaks and eternal storms above… and connecting it all, untold miles of tunnels and passageways.

The Inferno Line guards the Pit from external attack; those who would invade Hell itself must not only cross the deserts of Emptiness, but fight through an intricate web of fortresses and gates that seals all but the most minor and obscure passes through the mountains of Tempest. When the demons slew the First Fallen and took Hell as their own world, the unified defense of the Inferno Line fell into disarray, leaving the fortresses to be seized and held by any and every group with the power to do so. While the most prominent fortresses and gates have been seized by the Houses, there are countless others, both on the surface and carved out of the twisting maze below, that lie in the possession of other entities. Independent demon warlords of all stripes, from mercenary bands to cells of Free City Heretics, make up the majority, but there are humans here too – faustians who relish the isolation, cells of escaped slaves (the Branded, as they call themselves) who cower amidst demon-crafted defenses, tribes of Hell-born mortals (the Early) who know nothing else save the cold and dark and the endless fighting to maintain their holdings.

If one faction in all of Hell can be said to "control" the Inferno Line, to claim dominance by grounds of amount of territory claimed within it, then it is the Usurpers of House Lictat. The House is young, confused and vulnerable, but it is consolidating around its holdings in the Second Circle – and the Inferno Line is the most valuable piece of property in that Circle. For a start, it provides them ready-made protection of far better quality then the makeshift fortresses and estates that the Lictat are being forced to carve out amidst the peaks and canyons… though its anti-sorcery defenses are woefully pitiful, to the point of being non-existent, and the few sorcerers and faustians amongst the House are being pushed to exhaustion to try and upgrade their holdings to protect against mystical assaults. They are well aware that, were it not for Zethu's own confusion following the eruption of the Free City Heresy, most – if not all – of the House's most prominent figures and powerful warriors would have been Summoned away and murdered or Covenanted. For another, as the Usurpers gain control of more and more of the Inferno Line, their ability to access the rich soulfields of Emptiness – and to blockade the soul-harvests of their rivals, particularly the Haimon and Glabretch – increases. If the Lictat can establish a firm economic wellspring, then they can truly stand against the older and richer Houses.

Beyond that, there is another cause that sends them plunging into the darkness. Hell is ancient beyond even the demons, the First Fallen had other weapons then the hellkin, and there are many secrets that even the First Fallen were unaware of scattered throughout the Pit. In the time before time, there were lifeforms unknown even by angels, many of whom left tombs and cities and fortresses in the dark depths of the earth. There is the potential for great power to be found amidst the tangled passageways and uncharted corridors; tomes of eldritch lore concealed by the sorcerers of the First Fallen, items of power stolen from the Heavens, weapons of unspeakable potency crafted by races dead before the Fall, who knows what truly lies in the Inferno Line?

For all these reasons, and more, the demons of House Lictat work to explore and conquer the Inferno Line. But their task is not easy. Not only are there myriad minor warlords and hostile bands fighting to retain their independence and control over the territory they have claimed, there are countless traps laid by both those forces and the builders of the Inferno Line, there are natural hazards in the forms of weakened tunnels and geological shiftings that have buried some segments, or flooded them with magma or molten metal. There are creatures in the darkness that have never known even the wan, bloody light of the Morningstar; plants, animals, insects, and things not quite rightly one nor the other that stalk the labyrinthine catacombs feasting on all they encounter. The Tunnel Crawlers of House Lictat are amongst the toughest, strongest, bravest and most skilled warriors of the Tenth House.

One such band of Tunnel Crawlers were the Delving Claws, vassals of the demon calling itself Baron Zenisky. Their leader, Captain Tchort, was a Hulk, the only one of that breed in their number, not that such bothered it. Tchort was unusually small and lean for a Hulk, something that had caused many jibes about its Spawning Pit being tainted or its ichor somehow corrupted – as if a demon could be any more corrupt! Tchort cared nothing for such jibes, for the same quirk of demonic genes that had altered its size and build had also made it unusually intelligent, cunning and patient for one of its breed. Tchort may have lacked the bulk of its kind, but its armor and strength were no less then any other Hulk's; in battle it was the shieldwall and the siege weapon, using its power and reach and durability to shrug off the attacks of its panicked prey and crush them into the unforgiving stone.

Under Tchort's command were a dozen demons, two thirds of them Stalkers, whose speed, keen senses and physical flexibility made them natural masters of this dark, confined, trap-riddled maze. Of the remaining four, three were Artificers, who serviced the guns of the other demons and worked to disable traps and barricades that the Stalkers discovered. The last was a Beast named Nezrebe, a vile, diseased abomination who delighted in challenging Tchort's authority, thanks to it being the sole Daemon (Tchort's other followers were merely Devils) in the group. A battle-sorcerer, Tchort often yearned to crush the demon's skull and be done with it, yet refrained from doing so, partially because Nezrebe's powers **were** useful, partially because Tchort was legitimately afraid of going up against the magus.

As they passed through the latest in a long line of tunnels, one of the Stalkers paused, sniffing deeply at the air. "Hrrr…. I smell manflesh. Human prey is near." It growled. The other Stalkers were quick to agree, a chorus of soft growls and snarls and hungry chuckles spilling into the dark until Tchort rumbled deep in its chest and made a chopping gesture with its hand.

"Lights out; spread out." It rumbled, one meaty fist reaching down to deactivate the lamp on its belt.

The other demons did the same, even as they moved away to the best positions to lunge from or lay down cover fire. Demon eyesight was much keener then humans, capable of operating on the barest minimum of light. On the fields and forests of the mortal world, a demon could see perfectly by moonlight, or even the faint light of the stars. But no demon could see in the pitch black of the Inferno Line, not unless they at least dabbled in the mutation chain of Darkness… which all Tunnel Crawlers did, if they lived. There was no silence in the now-black chamber, save for a beam of light, wavering back and forth, from some figure as yet beyond their sight coming down a weathered staircase.

Ranma was not having a good day. He hadn't been having a good day since he'd woken up, and he was having an even worse day now. Sure, it was warmer down here, but it was pitch black (he was grateful he always carried a flashlight now), he had no idea where he was, or where he was going, or who lived here, or even if they'd be friendly. He was battered and bruised from boobytraps and his initial fall into the cursed mountains where he'd been before, he was hungry, and overall when something like a malformed jackal suddenly shot out of the darkness, screaming in triumph and trying to fasten shark-like fangs onto his throat, he was too pissed off to put up with it. Stalkers were tough demons with a lot of stamina and a high capacity for pain, but they weren't built to shrug off damage the way Hulks or Artificers were. Ranma's wrathful fist struck the demon square in the muzzle with such force that its snout was shattered, its neck snapped under the conflicting force, and its skull was crushed. It collapsed to the floor, its head a lolling bag of pulped meat and broken bones, ichor gushing from its mouth, quite undeniably dead.

"Die, manling!" Came a scream from elsewhere in the dark.

Ranma dropped his flashlight unthinkingly, grabbing the corpse of the creature he had just slain and hoisting it around as a makeshift shield just as whatever-it-was opened fire with some kind of machine gun, the staccato chattering echoing through the darkness and bullets thudding into the body and making it spasm or chipping up fragments of stone from the floor around him which cut into Ranma's legs, such minor wounds sealing up instantly. No sooner had the firing stopped then Ranma threw the corpse aside and dove at the shooter, his trained muscles propelling him through the air and into his foe with shattering force. In the dark, Ranma could barely see his foe, sensing him through scent (a pungent odor of rotting meat, old blood and rancid grease) and touch and hearing, grappling frantically in the dark, wrestling with his unseen assailant even as it screamed fit to burst his ears and clawed at his back and tried to bite him.

Finally, however, Ranma's hands latched onto his opponent's throat, snapping it with all the difficulty of someone wringing a chicken's neck for the pot. Hearing a chorus of cries coming from all around him, his hands frantically delved for the weapon his opponent had been using, desperately scraping it up and groping for the trigger and hoping it still had ammo in it. Feeling something coming up behind him, smelling its rancid breath, Ranma whirled and pulled the trigger. The weapon barked and bucked and spat in his hands, almost drowning out the agonized screaming of his assailant. Almost. He kept the trigger down until it ground and choked instead of firing, which prompted Ranma to spit curses and frantically start feeling for a fresh clip or something.

Tchort murmured to itself appreciatively; this human, young and vulnerable and caught off guard, had just managed to destroy three demons in almost no time at all. Realising Nezrebe was preparing an eldritch blast, and the remaining demons were starting to close in on the mortal, Tchort made a decision.

"Cease fight!" It roared. "You fight well, for a human." It rumbled, even as its curious demons reluctantly obeyed.

"Where are you?! Show yourself!" Ranma demanded.

Without a word, Tchort turned its belt-lamp on, drawing the human's attention. Tchort's admiration swelled when, after an initial widening of the eyes, the human otherwise seemed unbothered. "I am Captain Tchort. Who are you?"

"I am Ranma Saotome – what **are** you?" He growled.

"I am leader of these warriors, these Tunnel Crawlers of House Lictat." Tchort rumbled, gesturing for its followers to activate their lights and reveal Ranma was now surrounded by wary demons, each of which had loaded and aimed their guns at him. "And you have just killed three of my followers." Tchort continued. This was good as true; while demons could heal back from damage if they had iliaster in their reserve, something like a smashed brain or a broken neck or simply being shredded to pieces by gunfire was too much damage for even their paranatural systems to deal with without external magic.

"Maybe you shouldn't have ambushed me!" Ranma spat defensively. "Look, I'm sorry about this, but did you honestly expect me to just stand there and let you rip my throat out over a misunderstanding?"

"A point, Ranma Saotome, but that does not excuse the fact we have a mission to perform and we have taken unexpected casualties. This is something you should recompense us for…" Nezrebe chittered smoothly. Tchort snarled at the Beast's attempt to steal its thunder.

"Recompense?" Ranma jeered. "What for?"

"You are clearly lost and in need of allies – the Inferno Line is no place to wonder alone. If the monsters don't kill you, and you avoid the traps, then you will starve to death or die of thirst." The Beast cackled softly at the human's expression, which made it obvious the demon had struck valid points. "Join with us, lend your strength to our cause, and we will aid you in survival. If you refuse… well, can you dodge this many bullets?"

Ranma looked around, watched the creatures begin to move so that they had better firing angles, and sighed. Much as it galled him, they did have the upper hand, and it did at least beat stumbling around in the dark. "Alright, you have a point. But just this one mission, and then we split, alright? No strings?"

"No strings…" Tchort replied, drowning out whatever it was Nezrebe had been about to say. The Hulk and the Beast stared hatefully at each other, even as the Stalkers cackled to themselves, put their guns away and began to loot the corpses of their fallen comrades, the Artificers moving to lead their new human "ally" away and blockade him from their fellows.

_And thus ends the first real chapter. Kind of short, I admit it, but it sets us up for something better in the next part. Now, while we have the general outline of Ranma's path into darkness set up, we are entirely open to suggestions for minor plots. Monsters to slay, rumors to investigate, just about any situation you want to give us, we'll consider and see if we can't use that somehow. Suggesting an Astyanath noble kidnapping Ranma to use him as the quarry in a hunting party? Why not? Rumors reaching Ranma of a lost faustian's lair with a grimoire that might remove his Jusenkyo curse? Classic. You get the idea; Ranma might end up climbing the mountain to the throne of Grand Duke, but there's going to be a hell of a lot of blood, black magic, tears, deceit and sheer carnage along the way…no pun intended._


	3. Chapter 3

**Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Infernum or any related characters in any way, shape or form. This work contains themes that may offend – reader discretion is advised._

**Author's Notes:** Infernum, to answer the questions of the curious, is a third-party "D20 system" RPG produced by Mongoose Publishing. While it does use the same general ruleset as D&D 3.5, it isn't actually linked to any of the existing D&D settings, particularly not the Great Wheel. Its actual inspirations include Doom, Dante's Inferno, Mad Max and Conan the Barbarian.

For those curious about certain details about the Infernum or its occupants, I've created a forum where you can post your questions and thoughts and I can get back to you quicker and in more detail then this story would allow – I'm very hesitant to make use of 'info dumps' like I did in the last chapter; it couldn't have functioned without it, but I know it usually harms the overall quality.

Chapter Two: The Taking of Spine Castle, Part 1

**3rd Lament, 766AF**

Ranma sat, or rather, crouched on the barren stone floor, listening to the hissing of flames and the crackling of roasting chitin. He'd been traveling with these creatures, these self-proclaimed demons, for hours now through these dark, trap-riddled tunnels, and he was more then grateful for the rest. About an hour ago, some kind of monstrous primeval beetle-thing had come tearing out of the floor and attacked them, only to be cut apart with fangs and claws and melee weapons of all sorts. After that, Captain Tchort had commanded a rest period while Nezrebe used its magic to seal up the tunnel that the Spawn had come from. The demons had set to roasting the beetle-thing with little talk, though there were some small conversations going on. Most had drunk from some kind of bottle that each demon carried and jealously guarded from its fellows. Hungry and thirsty, Ranma had begged for some water, receiving mocking jeers and finally a bottle of snowmelt from the surface. It had tasted terribly bitter, but Ranma had drained it willingly, too thirsty to care about the taste. It wasn't the first time he needed to drink brackish or nasty water to quench his thirst. Now, while he waited for the food to cook, he had decided to ask Captain Tchort just what this mission they wanted his help with was.

"We've been sent by Baron Zenisky to clear out a band of thieves and brigands that call themselves Djara's Brigade." The Hulk rumbled. "They stole one of our holdings, Spine Castle, from its rightful owners and now they're dug in like rockbiters, using it as a base to make raids on our lands and murder our tunnel crawler teams. The Baron thinks they might be hirelings of the Hoarders, but none of us care about that. We're to kill them and take Spine Castle back."

Ranma nodded slowly. He wasn't convinced that he was hearing the whole truth -they called themselves demons, for crying out loud- but the mission made sense. "So why are you coming in through these tunnels?" He asked.

"Spine Castle's tough to take in a frontal attack." Tchort explained. "Even after that invader blasted a breach in 312 AF and made a gatehouse there, it takes a lot of effort to come in through the front door, and House Lictat can't afford that sort of sloppy war. Before the breaching, the only way in was by air or through these tunnels; we're trusting that they'll be so fixated on without and above that they won't look beneath and within until it's too late. Still gonna be a hard fight, though, which is why I took you in: you killed three of my best in a few seconds, even though we had surprise on our side. With your talents, we'll get this done easily." With that statement, the demon rose to its feet and walked off.

Ranma sat and lost himself in thought, wondering how he could have possibly ended up in this sort of mess, then blinked when one of the smaller demons -Artificers, they called themselves- presented him with a chunk of scorched chitin and a glutinous shapeless mess of orange goop stuck to it. Ranma blinked at it, then realized the other demons were taking the same stuff from the beetle-thing's carcass, and gingerly took it from the demon's claws. It smelled horrible, but Ranma swallowed his revulsion and took a bite. It tasted almost as bad as it smelled - like salted half-set meat dripping with spatterings of suspicious charcoal-like crunchy bits. Ranma forced it down and ate it anyway; this was all he had and he had eaten worse in the past... though not much worse. He pushed himself to eat as much as he could stomach, reasoning that he had no idea where his next meal would be coming from or even what it would be.

If Ranma had the faintest clue that his mental processes had just mimicked his father's, he probably would have contemplated killing himself.

After choking down the 'meal' as it was, Ranma decided that if he was going to leave this group after they finished whatever mission they were setting out to do, he needed a lot more information than what he supposedly knew at this moment. One look at the Stalkers and the glint of cruel mischief in their eyes cemented his decision to stay away from them for the moment and Tchort was deep in conversation with the weird wolf-headed thing that stank to heaven in those stained robes, so he walked over to the nearest Artificer and sat down next to it, the demon responding with a mechanical noise of curiosity as Ranma held up the gun he had taken in that fight only a day before.

"So uh, what exactly is this thing? Doesn't look like any gun I've ever seen."

The Artificer cocked its head as Ranma held up his weapon, before it nodded in understanding. "That's a shattergun you hold there mortal. It is one of the three most common...'guns' here in the Pit. It is designed, or rather was designed, to disable escaping slaves, but worked too well, killing them within seconds of impact."

Ranma blinked, "Damn, sounds like a waste."

The Artificer shrugged, the metallic plates grinding together slightly.

"Not really, we just take the souls that come from the dead body and torture them anyway."

That was the opening for Ranma's next question. "So what do you do with souls anyway?"

The demon's response was to hold up its nearly empty bottle.

"Plasm, or Plasmic Iliaster. The substance of the soul, the spark of human life, the stuff of which angels are formed. Only through the torture of a soul can it be harvested and because of that, it is our lifeblood, the reason Hell exists. Much as you mortals need food and drink, so do we need iliaster. It sustains our life, powers our spells, fuels our machines and drives the gears of the Infernum on their course. Iliaster is the fuel of Hell's fires, and without it, there would be nothing here but dust and darkness."

Like a flash the vial was gone as the Artificer studied Ranma with pale eyes, "You have more questions, I can sense your curiosity. Speak them, and for now I will provide you the knowledge you seek… so long as they do not harm us." Ranma felt as though the demon was grinning behind all that armour, "All things in Hell come at a price. Pay now or later, with your blood or that of others, but you will pay."

Ranma did not know it at that time, but those words would stay with him for the rest of his life. Thinking carefully – despite his reputation for impulsiveness, he was not stupid by any means – he chose to ask another question that had been bothering him. "After I killed those friends of yours, why did you just leave them to rot?"

The Artificer stared at him and then made a noise that was doubtlessly laughter, but reminded Ranma more of electrical static. "We are not so sentimental as you humans. They were dead, they had not been breached, we took what we needed from them and left them. There is nothing more to say."

"Breached?"

"Should an angel or a demon take a mortal wound, the iliaster within their bodies begins to leak out, much like ichor; it is possible, and indeed practical, for another demon to consume this iliaster as it seeps from their wounds, drinking it to revitalize themselves." Again it laughed at the horrified expression on Ranma's face. "This is the Infernum, mortal child. Only the strong, the cunning, the ferocious and the lucky survive here. One must be strong, here (it tapped against its chest with one clawed finger), or one shall perish. But if your will is focused and your drive great, there is no height you cannot climb to amongst the flames. We of Lictat were once common demons, grubbing in the ashes for the leavings of the other Houses, but now we stand before them as equals. In time, who knows? Perhaps, when the Throne of Hell is claimed at last, it will be House Lictat that shall bring forth the King of all Demons…"

"…What do you mean, they weren't breached?" Ranma finally asked, disgusted, truthfully wanting to avoid speaking any more on this topic, but unable to help himself.

"You killed them too fast. The iliaster within a demon is only drinkable while life still clings to their shell. When they die, all of the iliaster within their corpse turns stagnant and drained, becoming worthless to us." The artificer explained, grimacing with disgust, but at what, Ranma didn't know and didn't particularly want to know.

With that, he fell silent, having already heard more then he was comfortable with. He was unaware of the penetrating glance burning into him, the Daemon known as Nezrebe scowling under its hood as it turned back to Tchort.

"Such curiosity, with the right words that mortal could have made a fine slave for Lictat." It glared at Tchort, "And you had to agree to its deal. 'No strings attached'? You're as brainless as the rest of your kind!" Tchort simply rumbled in its throat, and Nezrebe raised a hand, "Fine, fine, it was an oversimplification. But still, what kind of idiocy possessed you to agree to such terms?"

Tchort glanced over at the human talking with the Artficier, now discussing how mortals existed in Hell, and shrugged, "I have a feeling. He's got something...special about him. He'll go places, I know it. Call me stupid if you want, Beast, but Lictat will benefit, one way or another, because of him."

Nezrebe's response was to spit a gobbet of greenish saliva onto the rock, "Suit yourself Hulk, but I still think you are a fool."

"And I think you're more trouble than the crowns it took to hire you. So if you have nothing else to say, lets get this mission done with." Rising to its feet, Tchort clapped its hands together, the sound drawing the attention of everyone to the towering figure, "All right; enough lazing about. Get your gear together, we have a castle to retake."

Ranma grimaced as he checked his new shattergun and loaded a clip of ammunition and at Tchort's signal, the group began heading to their destination once more.

There wasn't precisely a military order to the warband's procession. More of a kind of ordered anarchy; Tchort and the Artificers were roughly at the forefront, as their natural armor, coupled with the metal armor they were wearing on top of that, made them durable enough to form a kind of walking shield wall, Nezrebe at the back, and the Stalkers fanning out loosely around the group, a "designation" into which Ranma found himself falling, though he tried to remain closer to the group, mainly as he still didn't entirely trust them not to lead him into a trap or try and shoot him in the back. He blithely ducked under a spear that suddenly shot out of the wall at neck-height, reaching up and snapping it off about two thirds of the way down before it could retract, then leapt over a sudden pit trap that opened under foot. So far, he had to admit that this mission honestly was easier then some of his usual fights back in Nerima. The next hour or so of walking just flashed past with no casualties or even serious injuries, making Ranma wonder if these demons were even going to need him - after all, how dangerous could these enemies be if they were too stupid to make effective traps? He blinked as he realized that the group had stopped and were staring at a wall.

"What's the matter? Forgotten the secret latch?" He asked.

"There's not supposed to be a wall here, human." Nezrebe growled disdainfully. "You. Touch the wall." It barked at one Stalker.

"Me? No way, I ain't touching it!" It snarled back, before Tchort grunted with disdain and shoved it against the wall in question. Sparks immediately flew through the air, the demon howling in pain before the cascading energy threw it, charred and smoking, to the floor.

"I'll bite. Just what happened?" Ranma asked in the resultant oppressive silence (well, save for the pained gasps from the injured Stalker).

"A Warding. As I suspected; those miserable maggots have sealed the way in both physically and mystically, and we have no explosives!" Nezrebe hissed.

Ranma, remembering what the Artificer had told him about the reasons why humans could be valuable in Hell, tried not to look offended. "Explosives?" He asked sarcastically, pushing his way to the front and then punching the wall with all his strength, opening a hole large enough for all of them save Tchort to push through. "Who needs explosives?" He finished.

"...How the **fuck** did you do that?" One Artificer demanded.

"It's all in the wrist." Ranma replied off-handedly. "Are we going in, or what?"

"Fine – **you** go first." Some demon commented.

Ranma shrugged nonchalantly and hopped casually into the darkness beyond the hole, the other demons hesitating, then following as Tchort scowled thunderously.

Being first meant that Ranma was effectively cut off from the light generated by the belt-lamps the Delving Claws all wore, but this castle had sputtering torches mounted on the wall and lit, even though this was supposed to be an effectively abandoned section of the castle. The light they shed was pale and barely pierced the clouds of greasy smoke that wafted from them, thick with the scent of putrefying fat being burnt. The smell was horrible, and the smoke stung at Ranma's eyes, but he'd been trained to overcome adversity and he was pretty good at it, if he did say so himself, so his performance wasn't affected. Certainly not enough to prevent him noticing the shadowy figure present in an alcove at the end of the hall. Ranma froze, trying to become one with the darkness, as he studied the figure. It looked like a woman, more or less, the only difference being its left arm was unnaturally thick and muscular - it had to be, in order to support the chainsaw that had somehow been absorbed into her hand, pipes and cables running into muscles further up her arm, metal meshing blotchily with suppurating flesh, bladed chain idly spinning, not yet revolving fast enough to achieve full cutting speed. Ranma waited for what felt like an hour, then, when he was certain that the guard hadn't seen him, he slunk back the way he came.

Tchort grunted to himself as Ranma returned from his run ahead, "Well, what did you find out?"

"There's a guard up there, but I don't think she's too alert. I'm positive I can sneak past her." Ranma replied confidently.

A Stalker spat, "All well and good human, but what of us? Unless you have some magic trick to hide a Hulk, a Beast who stinks of rot, and the oil of the Artificiers, from her senses then please enlighten us." The others snickered as Tchort's hand made a chopping motion, eliciting silence as he returned his focus to Ranma.

"He is right, unless you can get us all past the guard, the alarm will be raised regardless." A moment's consideration and then, "Kill the sentry. Our mission here is to take the castle, we cannot afford letting any survive."

"What! Me? No way, I didn't sign on to do your killing, have one of your dog-things do it!" Ranma snapped in shocked outrage.

Faster than anyone, let alone Ranma, could react, Tchort's hand lashed out and backhanded Ranma across the face as the various demons smirked in amusement as the Hulk stood over the teen, "I can suffer insolence from these rats because I know I can depend on them to do their job. You have no such privilege human, so long as you are with us you will follow my orders, or suffer the consequences as a result. Kill the sentry."

In an instant, Ranma shot to his feet, effortlessly launching an uppercut that knocked Tchort clean off its feet. "I won't!" He declared.

Weapons snapped into place as Nezrebe shook his head, "So you sneak past her then human, and then what? Will you sneak past the others as well? Will you spirit away the castle under their noses? You seem to think that if you're defeated that they will treat you with respect. They won't, like us they would gladly take the chance to tear your soul free of your corpse and torture you for sustenance and amusement. You are an insect in their eyes humans, good only for the fun of crushing under their boots. And not only that, what makes you think you avoided detection by that guard?"

Ranma said nothing, mind racing for answers, even as Tchort pulled itself to its feet. "It's nothing personal, human, simply business. It knew the risks when it began raiding our lands. Besides, you killed my Stalkers without any hesitance."

"That was self defense!" Ranma protested.

"So is this. What's the matter? Does this guard look more human then my demons did? Is that why you're uneasy?" Tchort asked, grinning wickedly at Ranma's flinch when this was brought up. "You're already a killer, boy. Abstaining now won't take the ichor from your hands. The sentry will die, the only life you can save is your own. Now, what will you do...?"

Ranma's head sank. It was true, he hadn't hesitated to kill the Stalkers that had attacked him, and as the other demons had pointed out, this band of tunnel crawlers were the only ones in all of Hell currently not inclined to be hostile to him. He needed their help. Without a word, he turned around and slunk back to the alcove, doing his best to ignore the mocking jeers he could feel being thrown at his back. He was also aware of the Stalkers that slunk after him; they were good at stealth, but not quite as good as he was. Quickly and quietly, Ranma was watching the sentry again, studying her as he tried to muster the will to do what he must do. But there was also a pragmatic reason to Ranma's hesitance; the chainsaw on the end of his target's arm posed a threat even to him, and being where it was meant that Ranma had to either remove it or kill her quickly, lest he find himself exposing parts that were never meant to see the light of day, or missing vital pieces. Like his head. Ranma watched and waited, mustering his strength, feeling strangely like a snake preparing to strike.

Then, when the sentry moved into a position that Ranma judged suitably open, he virtually exploded into action, darting across the intervening space in a blur of motion, right hand spearing into her back with all of his strength, puncturing surprisingly tough flesh and bone like a harpoon, left hand latching onto her chainsaw-wrist like an iron clamp, a vital move as she jerked and shuddered and tried to scream with shredded lungs, threshing wildly for a good two minutes before finally going limp with one last spasm. He released her wrist and yanked his hand from her chest, sickened to his heart and stomach as the corpse collapsed onto the stone floor.

Almost immediately after that he felt a hand slap him on the back as a Stalker grinned next to him, "Nicely done, nicely done! You just might be cut out for this human!" He noticed the look on Ranma's face, "Hey, I'd have a long face too ya know, this one's actually a bit of a looker, but chin up human, at least you ended it quick for her."

Ranma shook his head, an expression of disgust on his face, then continued forward, the Stalkers now moving ahead of him and dealing with any guards they found, obviously deciding that the human had had his fun and now it was their turn to do some killing as gurgles and muffled snaps and cracks echoed through the stone hallway as Ranma jogged down the hallway to join them.

Tchort noted that it was easy to tell which kills the human did and which his Stalkers did. The human's kills were precise, surgical and almost always clean while the Stalkers...to say that they made a mess was an understatement from the torn out throats and nearly decapitated heads along with those that had been mutilated for trophies. There were no gunshots or explosions so at least the alarm hadn't been raised, but Tchort was wary to simply waltz down corridors that had been apparently cleared, not simply because some of his Stalkers had a tendency to leave behind harmless but annoying boobytraps as jokes.

So it was a relief to find the human and the Stalkers waiting patiently at a three-way fork in the corridor. The solution to the obvious and unasked question, barely took any thought at all as Tchort rumbled, "Split up, find the rest and kill on sight but be careful, we don't know how many are left in this place or what they have to throw at us."

With only a brief pause that saw Nezrebe take command of a group that included the human, Tchort made a signal and the three groups ventured into the gloom.

_And here's the latest chapter at last. Originally, we were going to make this just one chapter, but we decided we'd taken long enough to get something new out. Not to mention that having its own chapter to itself will help the 'fight scenes' get much more detailed. To those of you who do recognize Spine Castle, yes, Ranma will find out its secret. Those of you who don't know about Spine Castle will discover in the next chapter. As for the matter of fate pools and boosting armor/weapons, that's a trick Ranma is going to need to wait in order to learn about; the Delving Claws aren't quite ready to tell him about those special tricks just yet._

_An inevitable part of life in the Infernum is mutations. So, naturally, that means that Ranma is going to be picking up some mutations as the story progresses and the Corruption begins to fully infuse him. The thing is, there's so many mutations (50 themed 'Chains', with an average of 3 or 4 mutations per chain) it's hard to decide what ones to give him. In the Author's Notes, I mentioned a forum I created for Infernum. Well, one of the topics I established there is a complete transcript of all of the Common Mutations from the Book of the Damned (Infernum Player's Handbook, for the curious). Please feel free to read over them, and then alert me, via review to this fanfic, a post to the topic, or even a PM, which mutation(s) you think would work best for him._


	4. Chapter 4

**Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Infernum or any related characters in any way, shape or form. This work contains themes that may offend – reader discretion is advised._

**Author's Notes:** at long last, here's the latest chapter of Fall, Rise. I'd like to remind you readers that I've got a forum devoted solely to this fic in my profile where you can ask really detailed questions about the setting, and I've also got a list of mutations (both common and noble) for people to look over so they can determine which ones they think would suit Ranma best as he claws his way up the ranks of House Lictat. Also, unless a physical change is truly hardwired into a mutation (in the form of a drawback), I'm quite willing to tweak mutations, just for extra variety. Devourer causing extra mouths to sprout on the demon's body, Multiple Limbs/Carriage being used to form tentacles or a prehensile tongue, whatever.

I do want to point out that if I do give Ranma the Chain of the Beast, or the Chain of the Form, he's not going to bother with a feline form – Ranma sees his Nekoken as an embarrassment, it weakens him, it humiliates him, he's not going to want to reveal to anyone, least of all a bunch of demons, that he's actually frightened of cats.

I've had at least one reviewer ask if we're going to do romance in this fanfic. My response is a "maybe"; if you fans think we could pull it off, we'll see about working it in. Perhaps one of Ranma's future demonic minions decides to assume a female identity (demons are genderless by default, except for malcubi) to get closer to him and it becomes a relationship?

Chapter Three: The Taking of Spine Castle, Part 2

**3rd Lament, 766AF**

"What did I ever do to deserve a life like this? I shouldn't be here!" Ranma grumbled to himself. He was sure that he'd been tricked when Nezrebe suggested he go alone to investigate a certain chamber; after all, his particular 'squad' only consisted of himself, the demonic magus, and an artificer, so splitting up seemed pretty foolish to him. But he hadn't bothered to protest; the beast clearly didn't like him, and Ranma didn't particularly like Nezrebe either. Coupled with his confidence in his own skills, Ranma had been happy to separate from the disgusting demon at the time.

In fact, Ranma was rather sure that Nezrebe was actually afraid of him; he remembered asking that artificer about why Nezrebe was treated as somebody special in the group, and the demon had given him a brief explanation of magic, sorcery, and the difference between the two. Sorcery was a kind of ritual magic, of which the three most fundamental aspects were the "Three Keys" of Binding, Summoning, and Warding. As a human, Ranma was unaffected by any of the Three Keys, and his speed and agility meant there was a very real chance he could evade Nezrebe's battle spells and kill the beast, if he was so inclined. This was not any real comfort to Ranma, who was bitterly complaining about his situation, though he was prudent enough to keep it relatively low in volume - the last thing he needed was for someone to put a bullet in his head because they heard him ranting to himself. Tough he was, fast he healed, but that would put an end to him, no doubt about it.

The chamber turned out to be something of a disappointment for Ranma, who had vague, terrible images in his mind of some kind of dungeon or torture chamber, the air heavy with ancient screams and the floor slick with blood... or whatever it was that passed for blood among demons and damned souls. Alternatively, he had expected to be swarmed with demonic guards, spitting vile curses and doing their best to shoot him down. Instead, what he found was an old, dark storeroom, home to nothing more threatening then a scattering of ancient, somewhat rotten-looking crates. He walked calmly into the heart of the storeroom, poking around in a few eye-catching piles or corners, unearthing nothing more then an empty, rune-inscribed bottle of bronze and a pair of metallic orbs that it took several moments for him to recognize as an ancient model of hand grenade, which he carefully pocketed on the "just in case" principle. He was about to turn around and leave when he stopped; something was moving behind him.

Instinctively, he leapt straight up, easily clearing double or more his height as something long and thin spun through the air where he had been, a makeshift club in the hands of a previously unseen assailant, who goggled in surprise at Ranma's feat. With cat-like grace, Ranma landed behind where his foe was standing, effortlessly backhanding them across the face as they tried to spin in order to face him, the force of his blow sending them flying to the ground, their weapon, some manner of rifle, clattering and skittering across the floor away from it. Quickly and calmly he moved, stamping one foot onto his assailant's chest, not hard enough to truly hurt them (though Ranma knew, from experience, that he could press down hard enough to smash their ribcage if he wanted to), but hard enough to be painful and to keep them pinned.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" Ranma asked, almost immediately wondering where he'd come up with such a cheesy line. His would-be assassin look human enough, though there was something disturbingly ambiguous about his (her?) facial features. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact it was totally hairless, and covered all over (from what Ranma could see) with a grid work pattern of bloodless cuts, as though someone had methodically carved it apart with the tip of a knife, it probably could have passed for someone he'd pass by on the street in Nerima. The demon groaned, evidently shaking off the daze of his initial blow, and Ranma promptly shifted his stance so that he could easily lash out with a throat-snapping or skull-crushing jab of his free foot. It opened muddy brown eyes, looked up at him, and promptly burst into tears; looking more pathetic then... well, then Soun Tendo had ever looked. And that was saying something!

"M-mercy! Please have mercy on this wretch! This pathetic, cowardly creature isn't worth killing, please spare this worm!"

That took Ranma aback; usually, when he beat someone, they began insulting him and cursing him and swearing revenge. Pleading for mercy and groveling at his feet (rather literally, in this case) was a totally new experience for him. "What?" He said, unintentionally voicing his disbelief aloud, though his "captive" evidently took it in an entirely different light...

"MERCY! This one is too weak to be worth killing, its death will taste like ash in your mouth! Spare this one, o great and terrible one! Forgive this pathetic worm, this lowly maggot for attacking you, forgive this vermin for trying to harm your greatness!"

"Don't you have any pride?" Ranma asked automatically, disgusted by this display. He hadn't been very happy whenever Soun Tendo or his father had done something similar, and compared to this coward, they looked like stoic dignitaries!

"No! This one has no pride, no pride at all! Isn't this one pathetic, isn't this one worth dismissing, isn't this one a useless and disgusting wastrel who is beneath your notice?"

"Yes, you are disgusting, but how do I know I can turn my back on you without you trying to put a knife in it, huh? I wasn't born yesterday!" Ranma complained.

"This one can promise, simply let this pathetic one go and it will promise not to harm you! This one can't harm your magnificence but it can promise to leave your greatness alone!"

"That's really nothing more then empty words to me, you know." Ranma pointed out. He felt a headache coming on; he didn't **want** to kill this demon, though it had gotten to the point his reluctance was more because of how utterly pathetic it was then his dislike of killing, but he still knew he couldn't trust it to leave him alone just because it promised to do so.

"No, no! Not empty, not empty at all! If this one promises to leave you alone, this pathetic lowly slug will leave you alone, it won't strike at your grandness! Never!"

"I don't know..." Ranma said, shifting uneasily; he really was tempted to just let it go. He was clearly better then it, and he just couldn't believe such a pathetic whiner could be dangerous in the slightest... but then again, what was to keep it going for its buddies? Not to mention that there were times that Happosai or even Ranma himself had acted in a way others would call pathetic, yet underestimating either of them was a recipe for disaster.

The demon in turn, seemed to have reached it limit as it finally screamed, "FINE! I'll give you my Covenant! A life debt! My life in service to yours, just spare me!"

"Alright, alright, just shut up already! I'll accept your promise!" Ranma shouted back, fed up to the back teeth with this. At that, however, he felt a cold wind seem to brush against his spine, an icy tingle racing across his skin. He drew back his leg to deliver the killing strike, believing that he had been tricked and his opponent had been preparing some magical or demonic trick, but stopped as something caught his attention. It was barely visible, and over so fast Ranma would have missed it had he blinked, but he would swear that a ghostly-yet-solid-looking chain had just materialized around his wrist, its cruel links slithering forth to coil around the demon's wrists and throat. Shocked, Ranma unconsciously stumbled backwards and off of the demon, which promptly sat up, rubbing its chest with a resigned expression.

"What was that?" Ranma demanded.

"The Covenant is made, master." The demon replied.

"Covenant?"

"...When a demon gives its word, ancient geases laid upon all of the breeds are brought into effect, master. I have sworn my life to you, and so I am bound by my very being, by the ichor in my veins and the spark of life in my chest, to obey your every desire. The life debt is the strongest Covenant any demon may give, though any Covenant compels the obedience of the demon who gives it. What do you desire, master?" The demon concluded.

Ranma was silent for a few moments as he tried to swallow this. "So, you have to obey me, no matter what I tell you to do?" He asked.

"Until you either die or decide to release me, master." Was the response.

Ranma let silence reign for several heartbeats, then gently broke it. "What's your name?"

"Master?" The skin-carved demon asked, puzzled.

"Your name. I need to know what to call you." Ranma explained himself, still speaking softly. He was still surprised by this - who would expect honesty and loyalty among demons, after all? - but that didn't mean he couldn't be sympathetic.

"I took the name Marik upon my existence, master." The demon replied humbly.

"Then come with me, Marik. The others are probably wondering what's taken me so long." Ranma told it, before turning and leaving, the demon trailing quietly in his wake. In actual fact, Ranma arrived just in time to hear Nezrebe trying to convince the artificer (he hadn't learned its name yet) that he was clearly dead, so they had to move on.

"I ain't dead yet, but I agree we gotta move." He declared as he strode out of the corridor's deeper gloom, making no effort to hide the fact he enjoyed how Nezrebe started at the sound of his voice.

The beast visibly squirmed before composing itself. "So there you are, human. It's about time - what's that thing!?" It snarled, having spotted Marik lurking in the doorway.

The humanoid demon cringed, but Ranma interposed himself between it and the beast, even as the latter created a crackling ball of electrical sparks.

"Marik is with me. I have Marik's Covenant." Ranma told Nezrebe. As he watched, rage flared in the beast's lupine eyes, swelling and then dying as something that Ranma would swear was fear flitted through them, and then a tinge of grudging respect, before they went blank again. It growled and wriggled its shoulders in irritation.

"Very well, but that still doesn't change the fact we have yet to find Djara."

"She's down below." Marik promptly interjected, causing both the human and the Daemon to turn to it.

"What?" Nezrebe snarled, advancing a menacing step towards it, only held back by Ranma's own threatening posture. Evidently emboldened by this, Marik explained itself.

"About a week ago, Lady Djara found a hidden door, not far from where we are now, leading to some sort of tomb. She took five of our best fighters as bodyguards and went below, but she hasn't come back since. Nobody's been into the deepest part of the tomb, but it looks like it might be Angelic..."

"Angelic?" Nezrebe purred menacingly, eyes glowing with an avaricious light. "Lead us there, slave. We have a mission to perform, after all."

Marik said nothing, instead looking at Ranma. Realising that the demon was awaiting his confirmation, Ranma nodded slightly.

"This way, oh terrible one." The demon spoke, bowing humbly and then beginning to lead the way as the trio of the Delving Claws followed it.

***

Elsewhere in the castle, a firefight was now well and truly underway as the second of the three teams encountered a group of well entrenched defenders. Short of suitable cover, the Delving Claws were having a hard time of it, well and truly pinned down. While their opponents were only several humans armed with bolt-action rifles, quite evidently press-ganged slaves who would have preferred to run rather then fight, they were being kept in the fray by the curses and threats of a hulking slaver. The demonic leader punctuated its intimidation with cracks of a long, man-leather whip, while occasionally lobbing a grenade at the Claws in order to prevent them forming an effective defensive formation.

With such an inferior position, it seemed certain that the Claws would be either slaughtered or forced to retreat. Suddenly, there was a loud crack and the slaver's head exploded like an overripe fruit. Their taskmaster toppling bonelessly to the ground proved too much for the humans, who displayed their lack of foresight and intestinal fortitude by choosing to run rather then press on the attack. Fortunately for them, the surviving Claws were too battered and weary to care about pursuing such obviously-broken foes, instead consolidating and getting themselves into cover so they could lick their wounds. One of their number clapped the demon responsible for turning the tide of battle on its shoulder.

"Hell of a shot, Dagon!" It crowed triumphantly.

The stalker chambered a round, "Would you expect anything less from ol' Dead-Eye?" It smirked.

***

"Fuck me, I guess calling this place the Throat wasn't that far off."

Nezrebe scowled as Ranma studied the walls of the chamber. The group was standing at the entrance to the place that Marik called The Throat, and Ranma couldn't help but be impressed by what he was seeing, even if it was still a little creepy. Marble lined the walls, cracked and fallen in some places but still intact for the most part, glistening in the light of their lamps with a distinct moist luster as Ranma traced a design and pulled his hand away.

"Ech, this whole place is covered in saliva. Dammit, is everywhere in hell usually this disgusting?"

One of the others chuckled as he started looting a body he had found, before looking up to Nezrebe. "These ones have been dead for a while, still have most of their coin and gear on them."

The beast nodded. "Strip them and while I am loath to say this, distribute the coin even amongst us while the rest is for those who can take it the fastest."

The stalker nodded and grabbed several small sacks, tossing one to Ranma which he caught negligently before curiously taking a look at the coins inside. Deciding he'd ask about money in Hell later, Ranma secured the pouch and looked around with narrowed eyes, something was making his danger sense go off. He studied the roof, trying to spot something in the saliva-slicked darkness and the light from the lanterns. Anything could be hiding in the arches supporting the roof and just as Nezrebe was about to taunt Ranma for staring at the ceiling, he shouted, "Hit the deck!"

A shape flew over the martial artist's head, clawing the air where his skull had been only scant seconds before as it landed, rolled and stopped in a crouch, hissing like a snake mated with a steam pipe as Marik suddenly squeaked, "Acris!"

With a noise somewhere between a bellow and a croak, the figure rose up to its full height. In general build, it had the look of a stalker, lean and multi-jointed and long-limbed. Its head was different, though, an eyeless rounded hump of flesh split in half by a gaping maw, vaguely reminding Ranma of a frog. Its flesh was the bluish white of a drowned corpse instead of the red of old gore normally seen on a stalker. Its hands and feet were disproportionately large, and for some reason the shape of them put Ranma in mind of a frog – a tree frog, not a pond-dweller. Ranma shifted into a combat stance, ready to go toe to toe with this abomination.

Nezrebe saw his actions and sniffed haughtily. "Allow me to deal with this insect." It boasted.

The frog-thing, Acris, screamed in a disturbingly human way and hurled itself at the beast, who casually gestured and spoke something that Ranma couldn't quite make out. The air split with a thunderclap, audibly sizzling as a bolt of some fluorescent energy suddenly erupted from Nezrebe's outstretched palm and slammed into Acris, tearing a wound in its chest and knocking it back, sending it rolling with an awful clatter through the scattered bones littering the chamber. Snarling in a pained fashion, the demon pushed itself upright, ichor flowing from its torn flesh, only for a second bolt of magical force to smash it back, a third blowing its head clean off, though Nezrebe smote it twice more, seemingly for good measure.

"Nice trick." Ranma commented. He then realized the beast hadn't responded. "Hey, are you alright?" He asked. Not that he cared, he was just curious what the problem was.

"I… I need…" The beast growled, not looking at Ranma.

"You need… what?"

"Need… BLOOD!" The lupine demon suddenly screamed, hurling itself at the startled Ranma, sending them both crashing to the floor amidst the organic debris.

"Have you gone crazy!?" Ranma screamed, and then he just screamed as Nezrebe tried to fasten its fangs into Ranma's throat, the pigtailed martial artist instinctively blocking with his forearm. His other hand unconsciously groped for something to turn against his crazed assailant, closing around something long and hard and reassuringly heavy – the haft of a long-discarded mace, which Ranma promptly brought whipping around with all his formidable strength into Nezrebe's chest.

It should be noted that, in Hell, the most common way to make a mace or a flail is to take a skull, dip it in molten bronze or iron, and then fasten the metal-clad bone to a good, solid handle. This was just such a mace, with a head thusly composed of an eternally grinning skull with serrated fangs for teeth and a plethora of wicked metal thorns sprouting from most of its surfaces, marking it as the former skull of an Astyanath demon. Furthermore, this mace bore a minor enchantment to augment its lethality, with the end result that it not only slammed into Nezrebe's ribcage, but the iron-caked mouth gaped open and, shark-like, tore at the flesh. The end result was that Nezrebe not only slammed into the wall hard enough to crater it, falling to the ground amidst a cascade of shattered marble, but had practically half of his torso flesh torn away, exposing ribs and organs to the outside wall. Needless to say, such mangling was more than Nezrebe could survive.

Ranma panted, wincing in pain at his lacerated arm, and carefully pulled himself upright, barely noticing the weapon now held in his other hand. He was about to make his feelings on this strange turn of events quite clear, when he saw something that was able to make him forget about that. Pouring from Nezrebe's mangled corpse was an eerie vapor, bloody red and ominous, which congealed into a menacing, if vague, humanoid form, empty sockets clearly staring right at Ranma.

"Excellent! Pain, death, fear, hate, give me **more!**" It screamed, hurtling at Ranma…

"Oh, fuck **off!**"

Who promptly revealed that, yes, he **does** have his limits of tolerance, and he does, in fact, know how to fight dirty, by planting a steel cracking kick squarely in the fork of its legs. No, he didn't know if it actually had genitals or not, he was just too pissed off to particularly care. While the vapor-thing staggered, Ranma raised his fists above his head, folded them together into a sort of organic cudgel, and slammed them down as hard as he could onto the back of the creature's neck, literally hammering it into the floor, where upon it dissipated.

"…Master? Are you okay?" Came the tentative voice of Marik, causing Ranma to blink and stare in his direction, realizing that he was standing in a very different posture to the one he had just been in.

"What just happened?" Demanded the artificer. "First the spore-spawn goes crazy out of the smoke, and then you zone off – what's going on?!"

"…Didn't either of you see that mist-thing that came seeping out of Nezrebe's corpse?" Ranma asked.

Both of the surviving demons shook their heads. Marik, however, looked thoughtful. "This 'mist-thing'; what happened with it?"

"It ranted something about wanting 'more death', then charged me. I kicked it in the fork, then smashed it over the head, and it vanished." Ranma replied.

"We saw nothing." The artificer declared.

"A psychic attack, I'm certain of it." Marik declared, breaking the uneasy silence that had formed in the wake of that before it could really get started. "In fact, from what we've seen, I'd say it was a possession of some sort – though nothing like what I recognize…"

"Possession? You mean as in stealing bodies and stuff?" Ranma asked. "And how would you know about possession anyway?"

"That is the gist of it, yes, master. And I am what is known as a Deceiver – my particular breed have possession as one of our racial abilities, though it is not a skill I, myself, have developed yet." Marik explained.

"So, what, you're saying there's some kind of entity somewhere in this tomb that's trying to steal our bodies?" The artificer asked incredulously.

"From what we have seen, I think it may only be able to attack the minds of those who have committed violence, perhaps only in response to death. I can't really say." The deceiver shrugged.

"Just great. We're leaving now, right boss?" The ironclad dwarf begged Ranma.

"No, we're gonna get to the bottom of this. Nobody messes with my head and gets away with it." Ranma growled. This was not the first time that someone had tried to twist his personality for their own uses – he still remember the love potions, when Akane had bent his personality out of whack and Happosai tried to take advantage of him, Sasuke planting a hypnotic suggestion to send "her" on a date with Kuno… needless to say, Ranma had built up quite an intolerance for people (or demons) messing with his mind.

"Oh, great. We're all gonna die." The artificer moaned.

"Shut up." Ranma and Marik replied as one, the diminutive demon grumbling sullenly as it followed them though the door at the far end of the chamber.

Ranma looked around at the next chamber in the tomb, which had proven both empty and strangely cathedral-like, taking in the weird, organically curved and ridged décor of crystal-flecked marble. "There's something wrong here, but I can't put my finger on it… what a minute, are these things teeth?" He asked, turning from his examination of the contents of one of the many small alcoves littering the wall.

"If these are teeth, master, then I really don't want to meet the creature they belong to. This canine's taller then I am!" Marik responded.

"I want to know what this language is. I think it might some kind of legal document… but this isn't any language I've even heard of being used in the Pit. There's some similarities to Enochian… fascinating…" the artifice added absently.

"Hey, Kobal, get over here – I think this might be easier for you figure out." Marik called, prompting both the artificer and the curious Ranma to wander over to him. "What do you make of these?" The deceiver asked, pointing at the large pictographs adorning each of the four massive canine teeth.

The first made no sense to Ranma, at first, then he guessed it looked something like a network of about two dozen or so caves, each adorned with some strange symbol.

"I don't recognize these symbols." The artificer stated. "But I'm sure they're demonic in nature. Now, this second tooth, this clearly depicts the Fall." He added.

Ranma felt it was rather obvious it referred to some kind of fall, seeing as how it depicted dozens of tiny winged figures tumbling, burning, from the sky, with the bottommost figure shattering some of the caves from the first pictograph, but wondered precisely why the demon had capitalized the word. The third pictograph depicted one of the winged figures from the second, drawn in a "speaking pose" with one of the symbols from the first, with many more winged figures in the background, either dead or sleeping – it was impossible to say. The fourth and last pictograph was a repeat of the first pictograph, but with the map surmounted by a new symbol. "Do you recognize this symbol?" He asked.

"It's Enochian; it's the symbol for Lucifer…" Kobal quietly stated.

"Do you have any idea what any of this means?" Marik asked.

"Well, it seems to refer to some sort of pre-Fall race having already lived in Hell – that's what the caves and symbols in the first pictograph represent. This second pictograph clearly shows Lucifer and the other First Fallen as they plunged into Hell and carved out the Pit – they must have landed in territory that used to be controlled by this 'elder race', maybe even right on top of them. I think this third pictograph shows Lucifer coming to some kind of accord with the 'others', maybe after a war that didn't go so well for the First Fallen. Clearly, the diplomacy succeeded; see how this last pictograph repeats the territorial map, but shows Lucifer's symbol dominating everything?"

"And all of this means…?" Ranma couldn't help but ask.

"How the fuck would I know?" Kobal asked indignantly. "Now, we can either stand around here and debate interpretations of this and what it means, or we can get going."

"Alright, alright, no need to be so fussy just because you don't know what it means." Marik taunted, the other demon hissing like a steam kettle overboiling and pulling out a gothically ornate pistol and pointing it at the deceiver.

"Knock it off you two. Come on, let's get this over and done with." Ranma declared, having smacked both of them in the head. Normally, this wouldn't have achieved anything, but when you're strong enough to break wood with a casual backhand, it definitely gets attention. He led the two over to the only other true opening in the chamber; an upward-sloping passageway set in the ceiling, six meters above the floor. Ranma stopped below it and frowned thoughtfully.

"Is it me, or have we been going up since we got into this place? ...But didn't we come down to reach it?"

"It's not impossible it's both." Answered Kobol. "Gravity can work in strange ways, here in the Pit. From an outside point of view, it's quite possible that we're walking on the 'ceiling' and climbing down onto the 'floor' - there's certainly stranger things. After all, the Second through Eighth Circles are on almost vertical slopes, yet we can walk around on them as though they're level ground." It explained

Ranma was silent for a long moment, and then, "...How do you bastards keep from going insane?"

"Who says we do, master?" Marik asked, and Ranma wondered if his new... whatever he should call him, because Ranma Saotome was no slave-keeper... was being sincere or sarcastic.

Reaching it wasn't a problem; Ranma could easily jump that distance, but there were also ropes already leading up there, from grappling hooks used by the previous expedition. The problem was that it was steeply sloped, narrow, and its walls and floor were covered in vicious-looking spikes and barbed ridges. "Watch your step here; if you do fall, you'll either be cut to ribbons, fall to your death, or both." Ranma warned as he led the way up.

Of course, life, as always, proved it was a bitch. Maybe halfway up the treacherous slope, the trio clinging to the floor rather then risking walking and its subsequent lethal fall, a sudden loud metallic chattering deafened them, bullets bouncing and ricocheting all around them.

"That's far enough, you bastards! I will not let you harm the mistress!" Shrieked a strange voice, clearly hysteric despite its artificial nature. It was promptly followed by another volley of bullets, against which the trio could do nothing but cling to the walls and swear.

"Shit, I can't get a firing angle at it!" Cursed Kobal.

"How long can it go like that before it needs to reload?" Ranma demanded.

"...It should be exhausting the amount in its gun right about... *now*!"

At that instant, the barrage ceased and Ranma exploded into action, straightening up and half-sprinting, half-leaping up the passage, actually bracing himself against the spikes and ridges to propel himself forward. His hands were cut wickedly, his legs and ankles gashed, but all that mattered to him was that he finally reached the top, a bald, child-like figure voicing an electronic screech as it tried frantically to slot a fresh clip of ammo into the gun that had replaced its right arm, even as Ranma rocketed forth and his own right hand lashed out and slammed into its face with devastating force. It groaned, a strangely organic sound compared to its previous utterances, and toppeled unconscious to the floor, metal-colored slime spurting from its flattened nose. Ranma stood over the downed demon, breathing heavily.

"Master! Are you alright?" Called Marik.

"I'm fine. I... woah." Ranma trailed off. "...Marik? Kobal? Get up here; I think you're gonna want to see this..." He called back.

***

"What is Lucifer's name are we still doing here?" A human shouted before boom shattered the column, and the human, into small chunks as dark shapes surged through a hole in the far wall.

"How the fuck should I know? Hey Kirch! What the fuck are we still doing here?" A gunshot sounded and the human fell screaming as the demon in question refocused his aim at the advancing Delving Claws.

"Keep fighting you worthless scum! Beat them back, no retreat!" The words were brave but the thoughts certainly weren't as Kirch hastily grabbed a Throwing Skull and threw it into the dust as he ducked a bile shot before firing a burst, 'What the fuck am **I** saying? We should be getting out of here like Heaven was coming down here! Fucking Calan, why the hell did I let a human convince me to pull a last stand?"

He looked around, before snarling as he fired a burst from his shattergun, hissing as a bile shot struck him in the chest, "Where in the name of Lucifer is Calan? Someone find that cowardly fuck and bring him back here!" Suddenly the ground erupted underneath him and Kirch was thrown onto his back.

As this was going on, in a back tunnel, a light weakly illuminated a bundle of dynamite as Calan carefully set the fuse, the lone human wincing at the sounds of combat above before he shook his head, "Sorry sis, but it looks like I've got some fast talking to do if I want to get you out of that vault. Lets see you try to escape now Kirch." He lit the fuse, not seeing the Stalker at the other end of the hallway aiming a rifle at his head.

Tchort cracked his neck and knuckles as he stowed his hellcannon, drawing a large knife as he approached Kirch, "Well well, what do we have here. Looks like I get the bounty on you after all Kirch."

Kirch hissed and fired his shattergun, the hulk dodging nimbly for something so impressively bulky as the lead balls stitched a pattern into the roof, the prone demon rolling to his feet as Tchort charged in, the fiend dodging back before flapping his wings, wincing with a curse. "Fuck! Broken wing!"

A rumbling chuckle from Tchort told the fiend what his opponent thought of that predicament as the Delving Claw captain smiled toothily. "Aw, what's the matter? Got your wings clipped? Ain't that a fucking shame."

Kirch snarled and spat at the Hulk's feet. "Don't need wings to bring you down. Let's dance!"

The two combatants began to circle each other as the battle continued.

***

The chamber in which Ranma and his companions now stood was huge, easily as big as the chamber they had climbed up (down?) from, with walls, floor and ceiling of bone, and myriad strange symbols engraven, inlaid or painted onto the walls. The air physically trembled with some eerie, otherworldly power, a sensation like icy electrical sparks crawling over Ranma's skin. Dozens of mutilated demon corpses lay scattered everywhere, no sign whatsoever of decay. But the trio had eyes only for the centerpiece of the chamber. In the very center of the room, surrounded by a glowing circle of mystical sigils, floated a gargantuan brain, lit by an aura of sickly light and made of some greasy-looking black metal. Slowly it spun around, even though the spinal cord trailing from it failed to touch the ground, suspended by some invisible force. Ranma was the first to break the silence.

"What... is this thing?" He asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"I... don't know, master. I've never seen anything like this." Marik answered.

"Hey, what's that over there?" Kobal asked, pointing to the far side of the chamber.

"What is it?" Ranma walked over to the far side and stopped, cocking his head slightly, "Hey, you all right?"

The person he was talking to was a huddled female form, wings wrapped tightly around her body as Ranma shook her shoulder, "Hey, if you can hear me, we're going to get you out of here, alright? Hey, can you hear me? Hey!" Ranma shook the female demon harder, before grimacing, "Fuck."

He stood up and dusted off his pants, "She's a goddamned vegetable, I swear she's probably drooling if I could peel her wings away. Who is she anyway?"

The question was directed at Marik, who glanced over at the huddled form. "That's Djara the succubus, the leader of the brigade that secured the castle."

Ranma glanced back, Djara hadn't shifted from her position, "Well, she's harmless." He pointed at the rotating brain, "But that isn't, not by a long shot."

Koba cautiously approached the floating brain, his attention fixated on the runes circling its base. "Hmm... this is a warding circle, I'd bet a draught of Agony on it."

"How would you know?" Marik questioned, suspiciously. "Come to think of it, how did you know what those symbols were in the last chamber?"

The artificer clammed up, refusing to move or speak, until Ranma crossed his arms emphatically. "You may as well tell us. We're all in this together, we're the only ones here, and we've certainly no reason to share your secret."

"Speak for yourself." Marik whispered, but neither of the others heard it.

Reluctantly, Kobal spoke again. "I... used to steal looks at Nezrebe's grimoires. I know something of arcane lore, and I'm enough of a sorcerer that I can use the most basic rituals of the Three Keys. Not that I really need to here; see this big crack running through here? I don't know how that happened, maybe when Spine Castle was breached for all I know, which would explain something about the stories I've heard of this place, but you can easily see it disrupts the warding circle. Now, these runes look different to anything I saw in Nezrebe's books... they're pretty similar to Enochian, I think... but they're obviously keeping something sealed in here." It indicated the brain, then began patting itself down, finally pulling out something that looked, to Ranma, a lot like a calligraphy set. "If I touch this up, it should seal this... whatever it is... back in its crypt."

"Do it." Ranma instructed, and Kobal knelt down to attend to its task. At that moment, however, Ranma felt something prickling on the back of his neck, thought he heard faint, angry whispers, and then the previously-comatose succubus suddenly screamed like a banshee, clawing to her feet and lurching rapidly in the direction of the artificer, claws bared and murder in her eyes. Instinctively, Ranma threw himself in her path and grappled her, finding himself pushed over and surprised by the sheer strength she exhibited - this was like trying to wrestle an absolutely furious Akane! Only Akane had never been this vicious - or quite this noisy. She screamed and shrieked and howled, thrashing wildly and trying to claw at him, and generally making it very hard for Ranma to hold her down.

"Any time you're ready!" He shouted.

"Just a few more touches - there!" Kobal called back.

Immediately there was a deafening, ear-splitting, furious howling as the warding suddenly began to fountain sparks and flame as the air began to roil and thunder, crackles of electricity filling the space and running across the surface of the brain as the howling now became a shrieking wail of pain and fury before with a final rumble that to Ranma's reckoning more than likely shook the place from top to bottom the room stilled as Djara shuddered and slumped to the ground, the warding glowing cheerfully as quiet filled the room.

Ranma looked around, before carefully setting Djara on the floor and looking at the brain that dominated the tomb, "Right, I guess that takes care of that." He turned to the comatose succubus, "We'll take her back with us, grab the other guy as well."

"What do we tell the captain? About this place I mean?" Ranma regarded the brain for a minute, thinking.

"We'll tell him we lost Nezrebe to the guy with the gun-arm, I'll figure out how to tell him that this place is deathtrap when we meet back up with him."

With that said, the trio of Lictat demons gathered up their two unconscious victims and began the treacherous descent (ascent?) to the entrance to the tomb, their motions hastened by a distinct, if vague, feeling of hate and rage in the air around them.

_And, at long last, we have updated. I truly do apologize for the long delay in this, and it should be more regular from now on. We have the next chapter of Waaagh! Ranma! Half-written already, and the next chapter of Chasing the Rainbow is planned out and awaiting writing, so both of those stories should be updated soon. So please read, enjoy, review._


	5. Chapter 5

**Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Infernum or any related characters in any way, shape or form. This work contains themes that may offend – reader discretion is advised._

**Author's Notes:** Well, I said the next chapter for this would come sooner and I meant it. I hope folks enjoy what we have. As always, if you want to suggest one or more mutations for Ranma to pick up, or a quest he might get involved with, or a follower he might acquire, please feel free to leave a review saying so. The complete list of Infernum Mutations is in my forums.

Chapter Four: The First Step

**12th Lament, 766AF**

Marik peered around the corner again, and then looked back at its comrades-in-secrecy. "All clear, so far." It told them.

"Why do we even have that slave of yours standing guard?" Kobal asked Ranma irritably, trying to juggle one of the grimoires that had once belonged to Nezrebe and a portable oil lantern at the same time.

"Because we're almost done now, and the last thing we need is for someone to screw it up." Ranma replied, reconfirming his next movement yet again and painstakingly carving the next part of the warding sigil into the rock with his finger. This was a difficult, delicate (so to speak) procedure, and one that Ryoga Hibiki would have had a much easier time with - not, Ranma would have hastened to add, because he was stronger then Ranma, but because his Bakusai Tenketsu would give him much more fine control. Finally, he made the final strokes, and leaned back, nodding appreciatively at his handiwork. "That oughta do it." He proclaimed.

"Are you certain, master?" Marik asked, abandoning its post at the door to examine Ranma's handiwork.

"If you doubt my skill, why don't you touch it?" Kobal snarked angrily.

"What do you mean **your** skill? It was my master who carved it." Marik pointed out.

"Yes, under **my** instructions!" The artificer snapped. "There's nothing wrong with this warding-" Unthinkingly, the dwarfish demon placed a hand squarely on one part of the ward and was promptly bowled across the room with a spray of sparks.

"My apologies; it works perfectly." Marik said with false humility, grinning wickedly. Cursing with a sound like gears grinding, Kobal hauled itself upright, glowering fiercely at Marik and flexing steely claws in readiness to strike.

"Knock it off, you two." Ranma snapped. "Marik, give me that mortar; we just plaster this here stone sheet over this, and nobody will ever figure out this isn't just a wall."

"Why did we even go to the trouble of stealing those building materials and filling this doorway in, anyway?" Kobal spat, still staring death at the deceiver.

"Do you want the others to find out about that damned Tomb?" Ranma asked, grimacing at the unintentional bad pun he'd just made.

"When you put it like that, no." Both demons promptly replied. The desire to keep hidden something that could be an unfair advantage for something beside themselves was a reason any demon could understand.

Ranma only listened with half an ear to this, too busy placing the finishing touched. Done, he smiled with satisfaction and dusted his hands off - come to think of it, he was getting kind of itchy; it had been over a week since he'd had a chance to bathe, so he was dirtier then he'd ever been, even when he was wandering the wilderness with his old man. He would have traded one of his best techniques for access to a nice hot spring. Pushing the thought away, he gathered up the remaining bits and pieces of their covert operation. "Alright you two, let's go back to the common room; I think it's time we got something to eat. Or drink, in your cases."

At this, both demons visibly brightened; there was nothing like the promise of freshly bled plasm to make them forget about their concerns. Without further encouragement, they fell in behind Ranma as he led them on the now-familiar route to the chamber that the Delving Claws had come to refer to as the common room.

The common room was empty, and rather spartan anyway- a rather battered and claw/knife-scarred table and some seats, a small stone ice cabinet used to store whatever "food" the demons might have (mostly rats, gnarly roots and nameless blasphemies wrought in flesh - of the lot, Ranma preferred the rats), and an array of rag bundles used as impromptu seats or even beds. Ranma spotted a familiar object on the table and groaned in disgust. "Does he **have** to leave that there?" He complained.

The "that" in question was the severed, now-fleshless (the speed of decay had been quite incredible) head of the former leader of Djara's Brigade. Upon reuniting with Tchort and the other members of the Delving Claws, Ranma had ceremoniously laid his captive at the hulk's feet, in order to make him less likely to wonder where, precisely, Ranma had found her. The captain had then proceeded to unceremoniously decapitate the still-unconscious succubus with one stroke of an axe - the captive artificer had stirred moments later and gone berserk, only to be dogpiled by the stalkers and literally ripped limb from limb. Ranma shuddered and forced the faint memories away again - he did **not** want to see that in his mind's eye again!

As bad as those memories where, however, what had happened afterwards was debatably worse. Ranma had been looking for some unattended building material to stockpile for sealing the tomb. Noise from down the hall had caught his attention and, as he remembered he had seen a pair of stalkers heading that way to some of the unused sleeping quarters, he had felt compelled to go and investigate. He had thought that might have been fighting… well, the activity they were undergoing usually began with an "F", but it sure as hell wasn't fighting!

"Are you alright, master?" Marik asked, noting that its human keeper was twitching and looking strange again.

"Bad images... bad, bad images..." Ranma muttered. "How the hell did that even work? Who was supposed to be what?"

Kobal and Marik looked at each other, then blinked in mutual realization. "Ah. Sex." The artificer proclaimed, grinning as Ranma twitched even harder, instincts acquired from Nerima now being called into the mix. "Let me guess; you're wondering whether those two were male or female, right?"

"I'm not wondering, but I won't sleep well until I know." Ranma answered sourly.

"Well, the answer is simple. They were neither." The artificer replied.

Ranma's response was a flat, lifeless, "What".

"Allow me to demonstrate, master." Marik grinned, easily seeing the prospect for mischief against its rival. Before Kobal could realize what the deceiver was up to, it had crossed behind it and pulled away the concealing robes, grabbing the smaller demon by the arms and holding it aloft so all it could do was kick and squirm futilely, unable to cover itself or really do anything more then give a thin, rather feminine scream. Ranma unthinkingly turned to see the commotion, thusly getting a good full-frontal view of the nude artificer.

Kobal was thrashing quite hard, and cursing up quite a storm, but Ranma managed to make out the details fairly well all the same. The general body structure and proportions were those of a young child - maybe about the age of Hinako's kid-form- but leanly muscled, in a way that was rather like... well, Ranma himself. Or Mousse, even - Ryoga and Kuno leaning more towards bulk then the others. The face was androgynous, noseless, large eyes of a solid bronze hue (currently screwed up in fury), thin, almost colorless lips peeled back from teeth like rusty iron spikes, elongated, narrow, pointy ears giving it something of an elfish look. The hands were narrow and delicate looking, fingers maybe twice as long as they should be, golden talons jutting from each fingertip. The feet were more like a halfway point between a hoof and a reptilian claw. But what truly fixated Ranma's attention, despite himself, was Kobal's crotch. It looked... well... Ranma had vague memories of once seeing a naked Barbie doll in his youth. Aside from the fact it was made of brick-red flesh rather then vaguely pinky tan-colored plastic, that was pretty much what Kobal looked like.

While Ranma was simply gaping at the sight, Kobal finally managed to squirm free and land a kick on the Deceiver's chest for good measure, grabbing its robes with a mixture of angry curses and quasi-feminine indignant squeaks. Marik simply chuckled as the artificer quickly threw on its clothing and glared at the deceiver, which only prompted more laughter.

Finally, Ranma just shook his head with a shudder, "So, how can you guys just kill each other so casually when you're the only demons that will ever be? I mean; it's not like you can replace the demons you killed."

The demons stared at him, Kobal's shoulders beginning to shake as it struggled to keep from laughing, while Marik shook its head in what Ranma felt was a rather insulting manner. "That's not exactly true Master."

"Oh, come on! I may not be the most sexually experienced guy in the world, but even I know it takes a man and a woman to make a baby!" Ranma snapped. This was just getting out of hand; way too much for him to put up with.

"To breed like a human, yes, milord. We demons, however, are able to make use of Spawning Pits - special alchemical brews that can render down a living demon and create larvae from its remains." Marik explained. "Or we can breed like humans." It added as an afterthought.

"You just said!" Ranma began, a vein starting to visibly throb at his temple.

"By default, all demons except for the malcubi are neuter gendered. My own breed, the deceivers, may make a once-off decision to become male or female - I have never had cause to make such a decision. However, those who manage to climb the ranks, to achieve the status of Daemon or Lord or higher, may draw upon the geomantic energies of Hell to transform their flesh and become either a male or a female. Such a demon is able to breed in the fashion that is the norm for humans - though there are risks to doing so."

"Riskier then being boiled down into primordial soup?" Ranma asked in disbelief.

"...Not quite." Marik admitted. "But it is still the exception, rather then the norm."

Ranma's response, more than likely another confused and possibly near-disgusted question, was halted as the door was flung open with a crash to reveal one of the Claw's many stalkers, "Message from the Cap'n! Everyone to the throne room, Baron Zenisky is arriving here to inspect its newest acquisition and give us new marching orders! Grab your gear, your coin, and get your asses moving on the double! Especially **you** mortal, the Captain wants to present you to the Baron – and it's not the most patient of lords when it comes to newcomers who waste his time."

With that the demon dashed off to spread the word as Marik and Kobal quickly began moving, the artificer turning his head slightly, "Get moving! Zenisky's not the worst noble to serve, but it's not someone whose nose you want to tweak, especially considering it's a Slaver."

Ranma quickly caught up, "Another breed?"

Marik nodded. "Experts in finding, and then torturing damned souls. While a mortal may encounter any of our breeds, a damned can only ever expect to see the face of a Slaver for the rest of eternity."

Ranma grimaced; that did not sound like any sort of fun, especially considered how enthusiastic the demons he was with now were about getting their plasm. A breed that lived only to torture and maim sounded doubly worse as he followed the two demons to the throne room, the heart of all fortresses in Hell and apparently the key to how even the most pathetic demon could become minor nobility.

Still, Ranma wondered how much of that was the strange, brutal magic in this place and how much was simply sheer egotistical hubris as the trio entered the throne room, other demons coming in from other corridors leading to the chamber to join them alongside the Delving Claws already present. Say what you would about the mazelike properties of the place on occasion, there was good sense in only having one corridor and one door leading to the throne room.

The throne room was as large as could be expected in the fortress and Ranma studied the walls in greater detail, having only given the room brief glances whenever he had been required to enter, and he could now see that out of the entire fortress most of the repair work done was actually to make the room presentable, the walls were whitewashed, tapestries and hangings were everywhere and candles burned in the chandelier, though where in hell that came from Ranma had no idea, ensuring that the room was brightly lit by demonic standards and just shy of dim by human ones, but it was enough to allow Ranma to see the gold chains hanging from the ceiling and over the door, chains he could have sworn he saw hanging in other places as well, as he took up a position with the Claws before the throne.

It seemed that most of the demons did not look very happy, and a glance to the object of their glares, snarls and other gestures of hostility showed the reason, a group of well armoured, and armed demons stood to either side of the throne and they were in turn sending smug sneers and snide looks at the Claws, obviously personal guards of some sort, because they didn't act much like any kind of elite troops.

Ranma shook his head as one even stuck out his tongue. 'Hell, the Claws seemed to be more restrained than these dopes.'

Finally, he decided to study the being seated on the throne itself.

The figure was humanoid, in the same androgynous way as Marik, but a whole lot taller - easily twice the height of the eight-foot-tall hulk who Ranma had sworn loyalty to, however temporarily. It lacked Tchort's bony armor plating and muscular bulk, instead having an ascetic leanness to its frame - though this had clearly not affected its strength, for in the two arms that sprouted from its left shoulder, it easily bore a massive polearm, clearly designed to be wielded two-handed even by so large a creature. This strange implement, a long shaft ending in cruelly spiked, spring-loaded jaws, was wielded much like a symbol of authority. Eyes like empty pits seemed to stare right through Ranma and into his soul, and Ranma fought to suppress his own aura at the strange feeling that hung over the chamber and clearly emanated from the throne-seated behemoth, an aura of palpable respectability... and even more palpable menace. It idly shook its head, curved, sword-like horns sprouting from the top of its skull, sending its long beard of iron spikes a-rattle with the motion.

"Captain Tchort. Where is the skull of she who would claim our rightful land?" It rumbled.

"It is here, master." Tchort growled back, approaching within nine steps of the throne and kneeling, even as it held aloft Djara's skull in one great fist.

"Very well done, my faithful servant. Once again, you have pleased your master." Baron Zenisky proclaimed, discontent and envy clearly rippling through his private guards at his words. "But you reported to me that your mission was aided by a human sell-claw of uncanny skill. Where is this enterprising mortal?"

"Ranma Saotome, forward march! Present self!" Tchort promptly barked in a manner that would have made any Earthly drill sergeant seek counseling for feelings of inadequacy, and Ranma quickly stepped up to stand beside the hulk.

Intensely, the Baron scrutinized him, the feeling of it peering into Ranma's soul increasing ten-fold, before it nodded to itself. "Very well, human. You have done me a boon, and never will it be said that I ignore my debts. You shall be paid 6 oboli for your actions."

"Thanks." Ranma stated, simply. He wasn't too sure what an oboli was, but the strangled noise that had suddenly come from just about every demon in the room made it obvious it was a fairly impressive sum. Otherwise, Ranma would have protested about being underpaid for his work.

"Thanks are not necessary. But tell me, my interesting little mortal, what are your plans from here?" The Baron asked, leaning forward in an interested manner. "Are you in search of future employment... perhaps? If that is so, I could find a use for someone with your... talents..." It insinuated.

Ranma stood silent, thinking intensely. The idea of working for any demon wasn't precisely enticing, even though he had done it once already. That said, he'd been forced to admit to himself that, from what scraps of information about Hell beyond this castle he'd been able to glean, he didn't particularly relish the thought of having to struggle to survive in such harsh conditions, particularly if doing so would paint a big fat target on his head for any demon that figured he would be more "useful" killed and his soul extracted for torture. Which would be pretty much every demon he would meet. With that in mind, Ranma made the only sensible choice.

'Besides, these guys are more likely to try and kill me then to let me just walk out that door. I'm a hot commodity.'

Modesty, it must be said, is a virtue with which Ranma occasionally has problems.

"If you want me, I'll work for you." Ranma said, throwing in his best formal bow for good measure.

"Power and humility! You are an interesting little morsel..." Baron Zenisky chuckled. It stroked the iron spikes that served it as hair, then grinned wickedly, clattering them like hail on a slate roof as it swept its hand down in emphasis. "In fact, so interesting that I will make you an extra offer. Your skill and prowess are such that I am inclined to adopt you into the House, rather then merely hiring you as a mercenary."

"Adoption!? That whimpering worm?!" Barked one of the guards in disbelief.

Needless to say, Ranma did not take this very well. Feeling the menace in the Baron's aura intensifying, and seeing it starting to move, simply gave him some extra encouragement for what he did next. Before any of the demons present could react, a low-powered Moko Takabisha slammed into the frog-like guard's ribs, sending it flying into the wall hard enough to crack the stone, falling unconscious from the impact. All eyes immediately went to the lone human in their midst, one hand still outstretched and trailing smoke. "Don't push your luck." Ranma said, slowly and menacingly, for the benefit of the other demons rather then the one who had insulted him.

The demonic baron laughed, the sound sending ice up Ranma's spine, then smiled. "More interesting by the second it seems. Well then, lets not waste any more time and make this official. Take off your shirt." The baron punctuated the order by drawing a long, sharp knife from somewhere as it stood up.

Ranma hesitated; an unwillingness to let someone near him with a knife was a natural development considering his life, but reasoned that it must be for whatever ceremony governed this sort of thing - mingling blood wasn't an entirely foreign concept to him. He pulled off his shirt, wincing internally at the resultant flare of his body odor, but none of the demons seemed to pay it any attention.

One quick stride and the knife blade was now at Ranma's chest, the baron's face now quite serious, "Hell is suffering, and in suffering you grow strong and destroy those weaker than you." The blade expertly slipped under the teen's skin, and slowly the knife began to slice the skin, "Those who cannot adapt, cannot evolve to make their suffering their strength, grow weak and in growing weak, shall be destroyed by those greater than them." The knife twisted, just enough to painfully lift the skin from the flesh underneath it.

Ranma gasped in pain, then fiercely grit his teeth to avoid screaming; he had his pride, and what's more, he was sure that a display of toughness was essential in this ritual. Besides, it wasn't like he had never been cut before... admittedly, not to this extent as his tormentor slowly, painstakingly, made long, precise, shallow cuts, working to peel his skin away from the flesh.

"Ranma Saotome, do you swear to serve House Lictat? To acknowledge no greater power than the House?" The knife continued its slow, torturous caress.

"I-I do." Ranma hissed, the pain coloring his words despite his best efforts.

"Do you swear to obey the commands of those higher in rank, whether they be a Captain all the way to the Head of House, even as you strive to be their equal?" A wing was now fully traced as the knife began to reveal the top of a symbol.

"Yes." Ranma said, reluctantly enough that the Baron seemed to notice and prompted his agreement pushing the blade a fraction of an inch deeper, causing a sudden stab of fiercer pain. Ranma had problems with authority... but then, seeing as how the authority figures in his life consisted of Genma Saotome and Soun Tendo, hypocrites both, the perverse degenerate known as Happosai, the bonkers Principal Kuno, and the ditzy Hinako Ninomiya, that was really quite understandable. Nevertheless, if Ranma gave his word, he would usually do his best to keep it.

"It is impossible to avoid seeking to increase your wealth and power, for these are the tools to greater glory. Even so, do you swear that even as you seek to glorify yourself, that your acts and deeds will in turn bring greater glory, power and wealth to House Lictat, and ensure the weakness, humiliation and poverty of our rivals?" The knife was now descending to form the other side of the symbol.

"I swear." Ranma half-groaned, half-snarled.

The knife finally stopped, "House Carthenay seeks only to hoard its wealth, House Oblurott seeks only eternal feasts, House Sturrach seeks only eternal war, House Astyanath seeks eternal pain, House Zethu seeks an impossible perfection, House Haimon sees only the dead, House Riethii desires only eternal pleasure, and House Glabretch desires eternal sickness. Only we in House Lictat know true strength in unity, that in diversity there is greater power, just as the strands of a spider's web form a deadly net to snare even the strongest prey so in our unity we ensnare our enemies and strangle them. Ranma Saotome, do you swear to stand by your fellow Housedemons, regardless of personal opinion, regardless of rivalries, regardless of their authority and power, to stand united against our rival houses?" A goblet was brought forward and with a flick of a ceremonial dagger, the baron filled it with its own blood, its third hand still holding the knife embedded in Ranma's flesh.

"I... will... swear..." Ranma gasped, fighting against both the pain and the instinct to set his ki to healing the damage inflicted, undoing what had been done - who knew what sort of problems that would cause. At the very least, he'd be forced to start the ceremony all over again!

Baron Zenisky nodded, and with an expert flick, tore the section of skin free from Ranma's chest to reveal the red flesh and blood underneath before bringing the goblet over it. "Our blood is your blood, your soul is our soul, all for the glory of Lictat." With that, he poured the contents of the goblet onto the exposed flesh, the demonic ichor hissing and sizzling as it flowed into the exposed area, the flesh bubbling and warping until there in the center of Ranma's chest was a stylized bat-winged symbol, black as sin and possessing the sheen of newly formed scar tissue. "Welcome to House Lictat, Ranma Saotome. For today, I will allow you to stand, but know that at any other time, you will bow if not kneel before those of greater station."

A ghoulish smile cracked the demon's visage, "At least until you have rank and strength to make them kneel before you. Just because we are all united doesn't mean we have to accept our assigned place. Hell is in eternal competition, little mortal, and only those who grow stronger and richer shall reap the glory, and the weak shall be cast off like the refuse they are."

Ranma struggled to smile back, unable to resist rubbing at the emblem now seared into his flesh, the texture no different then that of his own flesh, his mind having gone blank at the sheer agony that had occurred when the ichor had contacted his raw flesh, taking everything he had to not scream in pain. He felt too weak to risk a bow, and instead settled for inclining his head in understanding. The Baron casually dropped the goblet and the knives both, proceeding to reseat itself even as a damned soul, a vague, anonymous figure, scurried forth like a cockroach and with the mannerisms of a beaten dog to retrieve them.

"Now then, as further reward for you, Ranma Saotome, you shall be henceforth be assigned to a new post." Zenisky restrained a chortle at the confused look on both the tunnel-crawling team, and the newly adopted mortal, opting to savor the possible expressions as he continued, "Instead, you shall be sent to an important fortress that guards one of the ways into the estates of Lictat, and place under the command of its lord."

Ranma did not like the way the baron was smiling.

"Ranma Saotome, you are hereby assigned the honor of serving as the bodyguard to Asth, Lord of the Shrine of Crawling Eyes."

_And thus Ranma's descent into darkness truly begins. For the curious, an Obol is worth 20 Crowns (Gold Pieces), which are themselves worth 5 Horns (Silver Pieces), which in turn are worth 5 Fangs (Copper Pieces). The obol is also known as the "half soul", for the traditional price of buying your own soul is at least 2 oboli. Also, for fans of "Chasing the Rainbow", the second draft has been sent to Ganheim and we're just waiting for him to send it back to us, so it should be updated soon._


	6. Chapter 6

**Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Infernum or any related characters in any way, shape or form. This work contains themes that may offend – reader discretion is advised._

**Author's Notes:** And here's our next work. We're just waiting for our beta to get back to us on the next chapter of "Chasing The Rainbow", but it may take a while to get out – little problem of a flood out my way. As always, if you want to suggest followers for Ranma, tasks for him to undergo, or mutations for him to pick up, please feel free to leave a review about it. There's a forum specifically about this for background material, so if there's something you want to find out, drop by there – check out to find something you want more details for, or ask a question, it's open to everyone.

Chapter Five: Shadow Stabbing

**27****th**** Lament, 766AF**

_Ranma kneeled somewhat awkwardly on the path of skulls set in lead that ran like a vein through the stone floor of the throne room, eagerly soaking in the warmth that came from clanking, snarling, mechanical devices set into the edges of the chamber, drawing heat from a vein of magma or molten metal close to the castle. In a great throne just barely large enough to contain its height and awkwardly shaped bulk, Baron Zenisky looked down at Ranma, one of its three arms idly toying with the nude succubus seated in front of it (which Ranma was pointedly **not** looking at)._

_"It has been over two months since I gave you your assignment. I want your report, and also to know why it was one of my messenger-fiends discovered you making a signal fire atop a mound of rubble where the shrine had been and you promptly forced it to carry you back here." The Baron rumbled, iron spike beard clattering as it bristled in accordance._

_"My report, eh…?" Ranma began, finally standing up; he didn't care whether he was allowed to or not, his knees were starting to cramp up. He scratched the back of his head idly. "Well… I don't really know how to do somethin' like this… you sent me to investigate why Asth's production of spider-beasts had dropped so badly, giving me full discretion as to how to fix the problem, remember?"_

_"I remember. I believe bandits were mentioned in the last report…?" The Baron suggested._

_"Might have been, but they weren't responsible." Ranma promptly told the demon. "I don't know how or when it happened, but Asth went off the deep end; started devoting all its time and energy to breeding eyeball spiders to guard itself, rather then the pass."_

_"I'll have that incompetent racked for this." Zenisky rumbled angrily._

_"Too late for that; Asth is already dead." Ranma answered flatly._

_"And how did that happen? You have such a strange aversion to killing." The demonic noble pointed out, pointedly staring at its latest human servant even as the succubus groaned lustily at the way Zenisky was fondling her breasts._

_"When it's my life or his, the choice is obvious." Was the sarcastic response. "That's why I was up top and setting signal fires, if you're curious."_

_"I am. Explain to me what happened." Baron Zenisky decreed._

_"Alright, but it's a long story… let me start from the beginning…"_

Ranma flopped idly onto the rag-laden, ramshackle bed that dominated one side of the room; one benefit of being the new bodyguard to the fortress's lord, and a direct envoy from their superior, was access to the best available living quarters. He technically had these all to himself, whereas the other demons slept in large communal huddles, though he had allowed Marik to share his room. He knew that some of the others whispered about favoritism, but he didn't really care; Marik was, at this point, the closest thing he had to an ally in all of Hell. The deceiver, meanwhile, looked up from where it was reading a crudely bound book, eyes glittering eerily in the light of the lamps.

"Something troubling you, master?" It asked quietly.

"How long are we going to be stuck in here?" Ranma complained. "I mean, the view wasn't exactly pleasant, too loud and cold for my tastes, but how long are we supposed to stand being buried alive like this? I'm a living being, not a corpse!"

"Patience, master. The tempest is still raging at its peak outside; digging ourselves out now would just be a futile effort at this point in time. We have plenty of air and food and even water; getting buried is a fact of life in this Circle. It should only be another week or so at most." The deceiver tried to encourage him, causing Ranma to flop back down onto his 'mattress' (his futon back on earth had been of better quality then this) with a wordless exclamation of disgust.

When the Baron had privately taken Ranma aside and explained that the Shrine of Crawling Eyes was an important watchtower and beast-breeding site, which had fallen behind in its production of beasts, and that it wanted Ranma to find out why, he had felt rather special about being chosen. On actually arriving at the petty fortress, however, he had been quite underwhelmed. The shrine basically consisted of a small, uncomfortable fortress built into and out of the black stone of Tempest's mountains, constructed utterly with its purpose as a defensive position in mind and huddling closely to the ground for protection against the howling winds. To be honest, on seeing it from the front, Ranma had been unable to avoid noting the visual similarities to a trapdoor spider hiding beneath rubble. The interior of the fortress, which several demons had commented was not actually finished in construction yet, hadn't really proven any more impressive. Besides the stone fortress itself and a watchtower built into the mountains itself and connected by means of narrow, smoke-filled passages, the tower serving as much as a breathing tube for the fortress as a place for defense, the only other building was an equally small stables where Asth saw to the breeding of various demoniac spiders.

"Well, it can't happen soon enough for me. I've got the information I was sent here to get, and I'm stumped about what I'm going to do. I was expecting bandits or something, not that the lord was keeping all of the eyeball spiders for itself out of paranoia. Beats me how to fix this mess, so I'm just going to send the Baron the information and let it sort this out." Ranma proclaimed.

"You could support one of the other demons here who wants to take power itself." Marik pointed out.

"Yeah, and start a bloody riot; there aren't that many of us here, but at least half the demons here want to bury Asth in the foundations and rule themselves. I choose one to support and this place will tear itself apart." Ranma mockingly pointed out.

"What about me?" Marik suggested slyly.

"…I may not be the master of this place, but I can see quite clearly what you're planning Marik, so drop it." Ranma told his demonic vassal flatly.

"Don't you think it would be… _advantageous_… to have a Lord under your thumb?" Marik wheedled.

"I **know** it would bring me more hassle then I particularly need, so drop it." Ranma snapped. "No, I'm calling Baron Zenisky in to handle this and that's that. I mean, it's not like the Baron will just kill everyone here and appoint a whole new watch, now is it?"

"…Of course not, master." Marik conceded, Ranma feeling rather unnerved by the hesitance in the deceiver's voice – was that due to disappointment, or did the demon know something it wasn't telling Ranma? Ranma dealt with that problem like he dealt with many others and promptly ignored it, curling up and going to sleep – he still wasn't used to the 48 hour long days that Hell ran on – even as Marik returned to reading its book (which, Ranma would have been surprised to know, was a battered "bodice-ripper" from Earth).

While the two "secret agents" relaxed, however, neither of them knew that their conversation had not gone as privately as they had thought. Scuttling high on the ceiling, hiding amidst the irregular flow of the stone, was a tiny creature that looked more or less like a human eyeball scuttling around on spider legs. This creature, one of the "crawling eyes" for which the fortress was named, had been secretly observing the human and the demon all along, the eyeball on its abdomen functioning just like a real eye and transmitting images. But not into the eyeball spider's minute brain, no, these images – and, through the magic of demonic bio-ingenuity, the sounds as well – had been transmitted directly to the eyes and ears of none other then Lord Asth of the Shrine of Crawling Eyes. Hidden away in the small chamber devoted to image reception, really the glorified equivalent of a monitor room on Earth, the stalker's blackened lips drew back in a snarl, spasmodically clawing at the stone with its claws.

"A spy! A spy! I knew they were watching me! They're all watching me! They're out to get me, they won't get me, no, I won't let them get me, but how can I make sure they don't get me? …Get them first…"

Grinning madly, the stalker thrust itself upright, still wearing the circlet that allowed it to mentally "tap into" the audio-visual network of eyeball spiders, grabbing a pair of long, wickedly spiked daggers and setting off purposefully.

The imp Glizzt did not really like its station in life, but it had to admit that spying for a paranoid lord of some backwater shrine sure beat grubbing for coins and running petty hustler games on the streets of some backwater city, as had been its previous life. As part of the army, it got its iliaster for free, and never had to worry about finding enough horns to pay for its daily sup, thus risking dissolution or, worse, the Wastrel Patrol. Having been assigned out here meant that there was almost no risk of death – the main reason not every demon joined the army of whatever lord they technically lived under was because one had to weigh free iliaster against the fact that it was the army's job to face other armies and every peculiar take on the rampaging monster that the Pit could throw at them. Spying for Asth made it somewhat less popular with the other demons here, but earned it preferential treatment from the deranged stalker. All in all, life balanced out.

Its philosophical musings on life went out the proverbial window when a sudden intense pain exploded in its back, the imp screaming in pain as it fell to the floor, one wing severed, further jolts of agony rocking through it from the impact. As it gasped and writhed in agony, squalling like a human baby, it reached out pitiably for assistance. Asth merely cackled and strode towards its former servant, the light glittering on the second knife the stalker still clutched in one hand…

Some time later, Ranma woke and headed out from his chamber to one of his various duties; checking on the breeding pits where the spiders where induced to spawn. Still disgruntled over being buried alive by a landslide, he had no idea that there was an obstruction in his path until he tripped over it. Rather literally.

"Yaaah! Oof, who left that…? Wha? Oh, ew…" Ranma complained, realizing his footing had been lost because he'd just slipped in either demonic ichor or on a piece of raw meat, a more gruesome version of the old banana peel routine, and that the source was a mutilated corpse. Ordinarily, one must understand, Ranma would have freaked out. However, after his first exposure to demonic battle, he had sworn to himself to try and be stoic about death here – Hell was undeniably a place of bloodshed and murder, and getting into a tizzy every time he saw a dead body would ultimately get him killed. And if there was one thing Ranma was, it was a survivor. In fact, to his surprise, he had overestimated the sheer ruthlessness and barbarity of the demons he was now surrounded by; he had expected to see a requisite daily reinforcement of guards due to murders in the ranks. Instead, this was merely the seventh fatal brawl or vengeful killing he'd seen since the taking of Spine Castle.

Disgusted rather then horrified, as he would have been on Earth, Ranma hauled himself to his feet to see if he could identify what poor bastard had ended up taking a dirt nap. This was, fortunately, rendered easier by the presence of a relatively intact head – in fact, besides the puddle of gore in which Ranma had slipped in the first place, that was the only thing present. It took several moments for Ranma to put an identity to the black-spattered face, then he finally figured it to be Hag. This was rather puzzling, as Ranma couldn't recall anyone having any grievances with the incubus, period, never mind grievances that they would be willing to kill over. Hag had always been a quiet sort of demon, preferring to keep to himself and the company of the spiders –he was one of the best beast-tamers they had- then to involve himself with any of the other residents of the Shrine of Crawling Eyes. Ranma vaguely recalled rumors about an illicit romance between the incubus and a spiderish demon of the Beast breed, but had never really paid attention to them. With some revolted expressions, he gingerly picked it up by the hair and began walking to the common room; he doubted that there would be any real punishment, but discipline was technically one of his many duties here…

About ten minutes later, there was a mere dozen demons gathered in the common room, merely a third of the total number of demons who should have been there, but Ranma wasn't particularly inclined to care (and the ones who had shown up were looking rather irritated at having been summoned in the first place).

"I suppose you're all wondering why I called you here…" Ranma began.

"No shit." Scoffed Harack, an onyx-skinned female deceiver with glowing coals for eyes. She crossed her arms beneath naked breasts for emphasis, a gesture Ranma pointedly ignored.

"Now, I don't really care who did it, or why, but I want you to own up: who killed Hag?" Ranma continued, holding the gory proof aloft. Silence greeted his gesture, and a vein began to pulse at his temple. "Come on, I know one of you did it, I certainly didn't do it, so speak up and tell us why already!" He rounded on the ruby-hued, noh mask-wearing hulk. "Morris? Did you kill him?"

"No." The hulk grunted immediately.

Ranma knew that Morris was a more typical example of the hulk breed then Tchort and was, thusly, somewhat stupid. He also knew that the hulk could be rather cunning and guileful in his dimwittedness. "Did someone else tell you to kill Hag?" He asked. Again, the answer was an immediate "no", and so Ranma turned to the steampunk cyborg imp, Ivin. "You got anything to say about this?" Ranma suggested.

"Wasn't me, meatsack. I didn't talk to the guy enough to hate him that bad, and he certainly didn't have anything I wanted." The imp chirped.

In fact, that seemed to be the general theme of all the demons present; none of them knew Hag enough to be able to hate him enough to want him dead, and none of them could think of any other demons who had felt differently. In fact, it was that topic that Ranma's attention was eventually drawn to. "Where are all the others? I know there's always about half a dozen in the watch tower, but shouldn't the rest of them shown up?"

This was greeted with another bout of indifference… and in a way, Ranma was grateful when Marik suddenly came stumbling in through the doors, clutching its bleeding side; it saved him from looking like an idiot when he lost it. This was shaping out to be one of those days…

"What happened?" He demanded, forgetting he still had the blood-oozing head in one hand.

"The lord's gone stark raving mad! It jumped me with knives – I barely got away!" Marik yelped. "I just made it here by the skin of my teeth – it was right behind me one moment, then it vanished. I haven't even done anything yet!" The deceiver protested.

Ranma dropped the severed head, thought processes given a healthy development in Nerima clicking and whirring into motion, beginning to slot the pieces into place.

"Asth has never been very stable, has it…?" He began slowly.

"Mad as fuck." Said Grall/Groll, the two-headed beast with split personalities.

"Either he mopes around like he was trying to single-handedly start a sorrowy or he's hopping all over the place like a goddamned rabbit while ranting about everything and everyone wanting him dead." Harack sniffed, "About time, I've been looking for an excuse to put him down."

Ranma shook his head, "Yeah well not like that you aren't." He jerked his head to indicate the hallway, "Lets head for the armory, the more weapons we have, the less that winged nutcase has to use against us." A general murmur of agreement rose up as Ranma turned to start walking, "Lets go, and keep your eyes and ears open, who knows where it's hiding."

The group spared a glance at each other, before shrugging and following after Ranma. It wasn't as if they respected the human in front of them, but they were bored and this seemed like a good way to pass the time and hey, they got to get rid of that paranoid bastard Asth while they were at it so the entire group followed after Ranma, watching the shadows for the faintest twitch of a wing or the glimmer of a dagger and they all moved just a hint quicker.

Not that they were scared, of course not, demons never felt fear, just...uneasy.

"Geez, they have to put this place so out of the way?" Ranma groused to himself as the group arrived, unharassed, although that could only mean that Asth was off killing the others and thus deny the group reinforcements. One of the demons, Marik maybe, was about to say something in reply when a hissing screech fill the air and Ranma turned to see eight legs, a large bloodshot eye and teeth, lots of teeth.

"Guys." The demons stayed deathly still in the face of the giant spawn as Ranma spoke, "I'm going to distract this thing while you get in there and grab some weapons. Ready?" Whatever reply was stalled as Ranma charged forward and slammed his foot into the spider-creature, the martial artist turning back and shouting, "What the hell are you waiting for? Get the gear!"

The demons took one long look at the scene... it might be nice to say that they hesitated, if only because of pride, but the truth was that they immediately turned and ran for the armory, not even the slightest hesitance or thankful look to the human who was saving their skin. In fact, so great was their hurry to the armory that none of them even thought about the possibility that Asth might have made other attempts to sabotage the place. The rudimentary flashbomb on the other side of the door sent a gout of fire slamming into the lead demon and knocked all of them head over heels - fortunately, demons are naturally resistant to flames and the demon at the forefront had been Morris, meaning the hulk was momentarily winded, but otherwise perfectly well and quite angry.

Ranma, meanwhile, was doing better then one might have expected - and not just because of his martial arts training, either. While the majority of his duties kept him inside the Shrine, he'd still found excuses on occasion to go to the stables and see the creatures being bred there, recognizing this as a dame war spider. And not just any, either, no; this was Old Bloody, the biggest, nastiest, meanest, most vicious war spider in the stables. The other demons themselves tried their best to keep the hell away from her, and she was reputed to have eaten several tamers. Ranma ducked beneath a scything, barbed forelimb, latching onto the vulnerable joint with a steely grip and twisting so that it shattered, leaving the arachnid monster unable to use it, then back-stepped away from snapping, corrosively venomous jaws, driving a fierce kick into a horribly human-like eye in reparation. Old Bloody screamed like a velociraptor on crystal meth, then lunged at Ranma, who sprang over the clashing fangs and half-climbed, half-ran over the spiky, deformed carapace of her abdomen, dropping easily to the floor - which was when a backleg suddenly lashed out, catching him in the back and simultaneously hurling him to the floor and opening a long, painful gash across his shoulders. Ranma gasped in pain, both from the initial slash and from the concussive smack of his skull against the floor, trying to force himself to twist around and get to his feet, but finding himself pinned under three wickedly sharp limbs, able only to stare up helplessly at the drooling mandibles and glittering eyes of his assailant, her limbs digging viciously into his shoulders and side, anchoring him in place. Was this how it was to end? Lunch for an oversized creepy-crawly?

And that was when the first roar of gunfire rang out, Old Bloody screeching in pain as the shotgun gouged out a bloody streak in her abdomen, foul, watery green slime gushing from the wound. Wheeling she turned to face this new threat, but was met with the best the remaining demons could do to form a concentrated wall of gunfire, blasting the demoniac spider into a lifeless, mutilated husk. Ranma breathed a sigh of relief as Harak walked over to stand over him. "Nice timing." He complimented her.

The deceiver ignored him. "He's hurt too bad to come with us. Best we put him out of his misery." She declared, a blatantly fake expression of regret on her face. It turned somewhat more genuine when Ranma twisted, spin-kicking her feet out from under her, then grabbed her and slammed her face into the floor hard enough to crack the stone, straddling her and smashing her head into the stone again twice more for good measure.

"Who's hurt too bad?" He asked the punch-drunk, bleeding demon. Yes, the holes in his flesh, which went all the way through, were painful and would have incapacitated any normal human. But Ranma was far from normal - ask anyone who saw him receive fractures in pretty much every bone in his body a short while after moving to Nerima, then being able to fight on unaffected mere minutes later. Even as the other demons watched, the wounds in Ranma's body began to close, his ki fusing flesh and restoring displaced or cracked bone.

"Right." Ranma calmly stood up and stepped away from Harak, "Anyone think that they should be killing me instead of the insane loon running around in control of the spiders? Anyone?" The demons shifted slightly, trying to make themselves look completely innocent as Ranma snorted before turning to the recovering Harak, "Off your ass Harak, nap times over." He turned to head down one of the tunnels as the Deceiver groggily snarled at him before getting to her feet.

It didn't take long for them to bump into Asth, but before anyone could open fire or draw a sword, the Stalker screeched something that was no doubt some manner of insult at Ranma before vanishing down a side passage as Groll spat on the ground, "Bastard isn't going to stay still, not so long as those damn spiders keep watching us." Grall gave a meaningful glance at one of the skittering eyeballs as the others grimaced.

Ranma nodded, "Then we'll have to cancel his subscription." Everyone stared at him, even one of the eyeball-spiders was giving him a funny look. Ranma cocked his head in puzzlement, "What?"

Ranma trailed off, snapping back to the present time. The Baron was drumming two sets of fingers on his throne's armrests, and it looked like his whore had gone to sleep. Ranma decided it would be best to wrap things up quickly. "Long story short, we managed to seize the control room, I broke his connection to the spiders and used them to sniff him out, and the others killed him. I used my Moko Takabisha to blast my way out of the Shrine and signaled you, telling the others you'd be sending news on the new Lord of the Shrine back."

Zenisky nodded to himself, his whore stirring from her sleep and giving him a sunny smile from her position. "A pity about Asth, he seemed so driven, but then he always was a little high-strung. Regardless, I believe I know a replacement who should be able to prove more competent in regards to the Shrine and your temporary companions shall be rewarded for their part as well. Now then, since you have managed to prevent what could have been a likely insurrection that would have left the estates of Lictat open to attack, I believe that you shall be rewarded 10 Crowns for your service and some time to rest up until I have need of your services again."

The giant demon smiled then as he shoved the whore sleeping in his lap towards Ranma, who instinctively moved to catch the female, "Perhaps you could do with some companionship as well, take some time to relax and enjoy yourself hmm?"

Ranma stared at the still-smiling she-demon in his arms with a calm, bored expression. Well, compared to his expressions of disbelief, panic and near-horror from Nerima. "No thank you." He declared flatly, unclear as to which demon he was addressing, and dumped the succubus flat on her pert, shapely rear. Smile changed to bitter scowl, she stood up, rubbing her sore buttocks, and angrily stalked back over to the amused slaver.

"Speaking of the next task, my lord," Ranma began, an undeniable catch in his voice at the title of respect. "I have a request..."

Although Zenisky considered himself to be a easy-going ruler, he was not about to let a mortal simply drop one of his more favored whores like a Glabretchi as he rumbled quietly, "A request? Speak then." Zenisky decided that he also didn't like the annoyed expression on the succubus' face as his hands began to move, the succubus smiling at her lord's grace before shooting a venomous look towards Ranma.

"I want to be reassigned to the Delving Claws." Ranma asked sincerely. Yes, the job was hard and dangerous, but it was out of the cold, meant he had fewer people considering putting a knife in his back because they were bored, and, finally, it was exciting - Ranma hated to be bored, and sitting around watching spiders breed wasn't his idea of exciting.

Zenisky rubbed his beard-spikes in thought, truth be told the captain of the Delving Claws, Tchort now that he remembered, had expressed a wish to have the mortal returned to his command and it was certainly clear that the boy was going to offend someone soon enough, someone who might decide that a mortal was just a damned in a meaty shell and regardless of his skill, Zenisky knew that there were many looking for a free meal in the estate.

"Hmm, yes I believe that some of your skills may be better suited in the Delving Claws. Very well Ranma, I shall grant your request and place you under Captain Tchort's command upon the return of the Claws from their current assignment."

Ranma bowed respectfully. "If that's all, master," (again, that catch in his voice), "Where do you want me to go until then?)

Zenisky waved a hand negligently, "Do as you wish, though I expect you to be present upon First Fall."

"...First Fall?" Ranma asked. Wasn't that when the First Fallen... well... fell into Hell?

Zenisky nodded, "The festival of First Fall is in three days time, and as a member of the House, it would be unwise for you to be missing from the celebrations."

Ranma bowed again, and walked away. A festival? Well, he'd been to his share of them on Earth - how different could it be...?

_For the curious/concerned, yes, we will be showing you exactly what a typical Lictat town looks like and what the First Fall festival looks like in the next chapter. As always, read, enjoy and review!_


	7. Chapter 7

**Fall of a Martial Artist, Rise of a Demon Lord**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Infernum or any related characters in any way, shape or form. This work contains themes that may offend – reader discretion is advised._

**Author's Notes:** It's been a long time since this was updated, and for that I apologize. We've been distracted by other things. For those also waiting for the update for Chasing the Rainbow, I assure you it should happen soon. We hope you continue to enjoy this work; we truly were surprised it's proven as popular as it has.

Chapter Six: Festival Day

**30****th**** Lament, 766AF (Festival of First Fall)**

Ranma stretched luxuriantly, soaking in the precious heat. The rest of Hell, he had been assured, was quite hot indeed and in many places did match the human conception of "fire and brimstone", but Tempest was _cold_. Ice and snow falling from the sky on a regular basis. Winds bitter and sharp as knives of pure failure. Purest chill seeping from the very rocks themselves. But here, in the Burning Falls Estate (demons usually weren't that creative with names), the temperature was quite comfortably warm indeed. It was still somewhat chilly to the fireproof hellkin, but much better than elsewhere in the Circle, and to Ranma, it was like a permanent pleasant summer day.

Part of the matter was how the estate had been constructed - like most territories in Upper Hell, even for those of House Lictat, this was basically the Hellish equivalent of a "small country town"; a Baron's personal fortress and the domestic buildings that had sprung up around it for the Baron's servants and workers. The Burning Falls estate, however, had been constructed in a fashion that was typically Lictat. Established in the center of a decently sized pass through the mountains to Tears, though not one of the greater and more important routes, a combination of Lictat spider-herders and Lictat web-workers had used their arts to completely enclose the valley, spinning great walls of fire-proof and rock-hard silk to completely cover the gap between the mountains in all directions. Approaching the gates set at the bottom of the walls, on either side of the pass, was the only way through. Furthermore, those same laborers had spun a secondary roof, lower than the topmost one, and built the city in the space between it and the silken roof of the valley. In essence, all of the demons of Burning Falls lived in the "attic" of a giant fortress of demonic cobwebs.

This was not, as one might think, the source of the estate's name. It did contribute towards it, though. As part of the building process, great tunnels had been bored and blasted into the enclosing mountains, tunnels that had tapped into veins of magma and molten iron running through the mountains. At first, the sudden deluge at multiple points of burning liquid earth had stymied construction, the average demon not being quite _that_ fireproof, but the insightful builders had pressed on with a very inventive solution. In an astounding display of the typical demonic sense of health & safety regulations and approach towards architectural hazards, the city had merely been built **around** the lava falls, incorporating them in all essence into the city's structure itself. This provided a constant supply of free heat and light, and if a few careless fools occasionally fell in, well, that was their concern.

Right now Ranma was staring at the bright red-orange glow of lava and white-hot liquid iron of the main falls, known as the Artery to the locals, as the position afforded him good views of several other landmarks. He admired the endless dancing of molten spray for few moments before twisting his head to allow a firework to whizzing past, exploding in a spray of green and gold sparks somewhere behind him.

The city was fully in a festive mood; not surprising considering that today was the Festival of First Fall, some day of celebration either about the first damned soul falling down here or a religious day about when the fallen angels that made Hell arrived, there wasn't much to prove or disprove either theory. Turning his head, Ranma regarded the largest mass of demonkind celebrating the day down in Skull Plaza, the main square of the city and instead of the usual markets, small dueling rings and whatever else it was packed with demons engaged in anything and everything down on the skull paving.

A slight turn took his view from the place that was the unofficial and occasional official meeting place for the citizens of the Burning Falls Estate to the home of the one who owned the entire estate; Baron Zenisky's 'modest' mansion overlooking the city. Modest was of course a relative term, Zenisky's mansion was a palatial residence and small fortress that hung securely over the estate like a giant spider and Ranma thought he could spot the Slaver noble watching his city from a balcony as it celebrated the day, the screams of souls punctuating music and the sounds of demonic laughter filled the air and echoed in the cavernous space.

Stretching slightly, Ranma turned his attention down to the city, wondering if there was any fun down there to be had for a human.

Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. With that, Ranma pushed himself off from the roof and let himself drop to the "ground". Given the typical demonic style, which saw skulls, bones, gruesome gargoyles, ominous statues and random body parts scattered around until the décor often went from "gothic" to "overdone", and the fact of how the city had been constructed, it was child's play for Ranma to catch, grab and bounce off of various foot- and hand-holds until he landed light as a feather on the street. Weaving without moving to allow a vaguely lupine Beast and a Deceiver that looked like a charred corpse walking to get past, he picked a direction at random and set off to see what he could find to distract himself. After all, he had no work until after the festival was over and he certainly wasn't about to go and watch the torturers displaying their skill at mutilating the souls gathered on the estate.

Whistling, Ranma turned slightly when he heard roars and the appreciative cheers of a crowd and turned down a street to investigate, before stopping short at the massive serpentine heads whipping above him, snarling and hissing as the crowd of demons cheered and jeered their appreciation of the sight as the demon showing off the beast shouted over the hissing roars and cheers.

"Yes good noble demons, feast your eyes on this magnificent beast, caught from the Sunless Sea itself, a strange creature responsible for the sinking of no less than fifty ships before it was finally caught, although the one who caught it had to spend twenty damned souls as bait. Poor things, you can still hear them screaming inside its stomach." As if to prove the demon's statement, Ranma caught the faint sounds of screaming occasionally escaping the maws of the beast, to the delight of the crowd.

Shaking his head, not in the mood to stare at an overgrown water lizard, Ranma drifted down another alleyway.

Two rights and a left later, ducking effortlessly past a thrown knife from a brawling pair of succubi, Ranma almost didn't notice the rat-like imp that snuck up on him and picked his pocket. Almost. Like a cat seizing a mouse he whirled to face the foolish demon, hand lashing out to seize his prey - but just a second too late as it took off running. "Come back here, you!" Ranma snarled, racing after the agile little demon. None of the passing by demons paid any attention, except the odd glance of curiosity, but Ranma didn't need them. He was quick on his feet and had much longer legs than an imp did - he'd catch the little bastard...

And that was when a figure swept down on a silken string and snatched the imp up right in front of him. Ranma skidded to a halt, cursing, but his profanities ran dry when he heard the imp's own cries of shock and fear.

As he watched, the demon responsible (an incubus with some very spider-like physical traits) swooped around in a semi circle, then flipped through the air to grab onto a strand at a greater height to create a higher semi-circle. The imp in his arms screamed in fear as, at the peak of his arc, he dropped it. As it tumbled through the air, too weak to have developed its wings, a new acrobat came swinging in - an ape-like Beast that grabbed it in its hand-like feet. Instead of relief, the imp shrieked again, droplets of black ichor raining down to spatter on Ranma's upturned face. A sinking in his heart, Ranma watched as several more acrobats joined the first two, most of them Malcubi or Deceivers. Gracefully they swung and leapt and darted and plunged across the heights, tossing and dropping the imp back and forth as they went. And each time it was passed to a new acrobat, the imp cried out as its flesh was rent and torn. The trickle of ichor become a downpour, faster and faster they went, the imp's screams fading away as the agony became too relentless for it to draw breath to howl its protests, scraps of meat and chunks of bone cascading down onto Ranma's head until, at last, his wallet fell with a soft schlurp into the gore at his feet.

With slow, practiced motions, Ranma closed his eyes and shook his head, scraping off the more persistent meat with his hand, and then reached down to pick it up. Giving it a waggle to get some of the worst of the ichor off, he looked the lead acrobat straight in the eye and spoke but a single word. "Thanks."

As Ranma headed down another street, he caught site of a group of demons gathered around in a small huddle, just as one of them spotted him in turn. The huddle conversed for a moment, and then the demon that spotted him waved him over with a shout, "Oi! Mortal! You interested in a roll of the dice?"

Shrugging, Ranma walked over.

"Sounds fun, what's the game?"

The demons relaxed slightly as the one who called him over explained.

"The game's Rat, Bug, Spider; you throw a number based on the number of legs, thats a four, six or eight to double your ante. If you throw a seven, ya win nothing but get another throw, ya roll anything else, you get nothing and someone else rolls until one of us wins."

As the demon explained the betting options and the payouts, Ranma nodded. Seemed simple in theory but complicated in practice; he could work with that. "So why'd you call me over anyway?"

The demons glanced at one another before a large hulk spoke up. "One of the others cheated, so we ate him. We're one guy short and you just happened to come along. You in, or are you out human?"

Ranma smiled pleasantly, "Lets have those dice."

Ranma didn't know how it went downhill from there, he pretty much had a handle on the game and was winning fairly often, often enough that a couple of the demons, who had been fairly edgy since he started playing, suddenly declared he was cheating and tried to jump him, if Ranma's feet hadn't been in the way.

"Right, so is someone going to explain why you all thought I was cheating?" The demon he was holding by the neck spluttered slightly before he managed to get some air in his lungs.

"Fate pools, mortals can do something that lets them manipulate fate itself, lets them cheat at any sort of gambling and anything that relies on chance or probability. Don't ask me how they do it, they just do!"

Ranma sighed, "Well, thanks for informing me that I can do something like that down here." With that he unceremoniously smashed his fist into the demon's face and walked off leaving the group lying unconscious in the alleyway.

Narrowly dodging being coated in something glutinous and absolutely foul-smelling by a cackling fiend, Ranma didn't notice there was somebody on the same path as him until they collided headfirst. "Hey, watch it!" He snapped, then found his voice vanishing as he realized who he was looking at. A perfect double of himself! Ranma blinked incredulously, idly rubbing the spot where their skulls had banged together. And every action he did, the doppelganger did too, a perfect mirror image of Ranma, even as he pushed himself off of the ground one handed. Ranma took a step to the right, hoping to get past the thing, and it stepped to the right as well. Two steps left, one step forward, one step back, everything he did, the other Ranma did as well. It even managed to mimic the vein pulsing in irritation in his forehead. It didn't, however, seem to notice the minor changes in body language as Ranma shifted himself into a versatile combat stance, and when Ranma lashed out, his punch caught it square in the head, crimson-specked spittle erupting into the air before it crashed unconscious onto the ground. As Ranma watched, it fizzled like a bad TV reception and then faded away to reveal an androgynous, skinned looking demon.

Ranma spat on the ground and moved on, deliberately stepping on its ribcage as he went. Damn mimic-mimes...

As Ranma headed through the twisting streets, his ears picked up an eerie, siren-like tune coming from a side-street and after following the tune, he found a group of bone flautists, the demonic minstrels following a druggist as she distributed her wares, demons and a few mortals twisting and twirling all over the small park seemingly in time to the music as the druggist came up to him.

"Astinic? Lotus Dust? I have some fine vintage Fermented Agony here as well. Come and indulge and enjoy the music, just the thing to help you relax from all this excitement. Come, come, have some Deathdust, free of charge of course." She pressed a small packet into Ranma's hands and walked off, the flautists now starting a more excited tempo that was obviously having an effect on the drugged up reveler's own experiences, some of the mortals apparently starting to have bad trips, or really good ones he couldn't tell with all the screaming they were doing.

Studying the packet in his hand, Ranma slipped it into his pocket and vanished down another street. He wasn't going to indulge, but you never knew when something like this might be useful.

Mere minutes after leaving behind the impromptu drug house, Ranma found himself at a small "private" feast. It looked like the residents of a particular block of hellholes had all crawled out of their pits and joined together in an oddly communal fashion to celebrate. No less than three troughs of plasm, and a variety of bottles of the same, lay there for the taking, a table was heaped with roast spawn and strangeling plants to supplement the vital iliaster, and three souls were being brutally rent and mangled by crowing demons. On the steps to one house, three demons of indeterminate sex and breed lay tangled in lust, while a dozen others cavorted wildly alone or in small groups throughout the main streets. Ranma cautiously wended his way through the crowd of laughing, playing demons, dodging several playful sets of claws, many in mock irritation, one or two in a fashion that strangely reminded him of his more amorous fiancees. Headed to the table, he grabbed a whole haunch from something that looked like a sheep with the feet of a cockerel and the head of a monkey, ready to run if the demons objected but too hungry to pass it by. None of them seemed to notice, and so he eagerly set to gnawing on the tough, gamy flesh. Maybe he'd been down here too long, but it wasn't so bad, really.

"Make way! Make way you scum! Coming through!" Bellowed an imperious voice.

Ranma turned and watched as a swaggering Artificer drove a hulking abomination of chitin and dripping slime and pig iron through the streets, crushing any too slow to move underfoot as it went. Easily the size of Captain Tchort, the thing was hunchbacked and headless, two great insect-like eyes of glass filled with softly

luminescent slime the only thing that approximated a face. Arms thick as oil drums with steel claws like those of a giant sloth scraped knuckles first along the ground like an ape as it shuffled mindlessly onwards.

"What is that?" Ranma murmured to himself.

"S' a biomechanical, one of them alchemic clockwork-flesh golems that the Veiled House makes." Grumbled a raggedy winged Fiend swaying softly nearby, clearly drunk or drugged into a stupor. "No s'cuse for real soldiers..." It murmured, then collapsed backwards onto the table, snoring.

Ranma watched it vanish, unthinkingly grabbing a goblet close to hand and taking a swig in his thirst. He froze as the taste hit him; thin, oily, nauseating. A hint of blood and tears, a faint echo of screams in his mind. He'd just taken a mouthful of iliaster! For a long moment, Ranma contemplated spitting; it was the right thing to do. But, then he realised how thirsty he was, and it would be a waste to do that, wouldn't it? Finally, he swallowed.

It felt... strangely quenching. Invigorating, even. Ranma no longer felt so thirsty - if anything, he felt more alive. A tingle ran up and down his spine, like a shiver of pleasure. Energy seemed to crackle under his skin, his eyes sharper, his hearing keener, his touch more sensitive. He felt /good/... Unaware of the grin on his face, he picked a street out of the square at random and headed towards it.

"Well, well, looks like someone's enjoying the party eh boys?" A chorus of chuckles caught Ranma's attention and he turned slightly to see a group of demons, mostly Imps and Beasts along with a pair of Deceivers, wander out of a shadowy side-alley, "I think you're the generous type, so perhaps you could be persuaded to pay a toll, for wandering on our turf you see, just pay up and maybe we won't yank you out all that meat instead."

"Dat is, if Lytch don't decide to play with ya first." One of the other demons chuckled as a huge shadow moved into the light.

It was like someone had taken a small mountain of blood-colored clay, or enough meat to comfortably fill an elephant's frame, and molded it into an overly muscular mockery of a human. The bald, flat, helmet-like head sat atop a thick neck that was nearly impossible to tell apart from the massive shoulders, both parts of its body thick with corded ropes of sinew and muscle. The demon, quite obviously a Hulk, fixed Ranma with a leering grin; eyes burning with typical demonic malice stared back from sunken sockets under ridged plates that were a clear insult to the concept of eyebrows. It stepped forward with deliberate slowness and obscene delicacy, each motion setting every muscle to rippling, making the demon appear to be made out of gelatin.

"Heh, yeah, I'm thinking that might be fun."

Ranma grinned, all teeth and no humor. "Yeah, this _is_ gonna be fun..." He replied, cracking his knuckles. This wouldn't be the first would-be mugger he'd brutalized, even before coming to Hell, and punching someone in the face was practically the demonic national sport. Rolling his shoulders so that they popped, cracking his neck, he took a loose stance. "Any time you're ready, cupcake." He taunted the demon.

Lytch snarled, "Gonna use your thigh bones as toothpicks mortal", and charged. A fist the size of a bowling ball swung around in a devastating haymaker, while a callous backhand from the other sent demons flying out of his way… those that hadn't already dodged the charge in the first place.

Strong, this demon clearly was. Ranma certainly intended to think twice before allowing him to land a blow. Of course, first he'd have to /land/ a blow; his speed was nothing to write home about. Languidly, Ranma grabbed the fist in both hands and used it like a lever to flip through the air, landing neatly on the back of the massive wrist. "Too slow."

Then, before the Hulk could realize just how agile and quick his human opponent was, he launched himself from the wrist in a powerful jumping kick that caught his foe squarely in the cheek, thrusting the demon back two, three steps and clearly pushing him backwards even as Ranma hit the ground hands-first and triple-somersaulted to a safe distance.

Lytch growled like rusty metal scraping against more of the same. "Got some speed to you, and I think I almost felt that." With that he charged with another snarl, intent on catching the little mouse in front of him.

Like a greased eel, Ranma slipped along the ground between and under the Hulk's legs, using the momentum and the position to launch a boulder-breaking straight-armed punch squarely into the flesh between the demon's legs. Normally he wouldn't use crotch-shots, but there were no rules in Hell... besides, he found himself wondering, did it even count as a crotch-shot when his opponent literally had no balls?

Either way it worked as Lytch made a pained groan and slumped slightly before turning with a roar. "You'll pay for that human!" A fist came up in an uppercut within seconds of the roar.

Ranma nimbly stepped back and out of range at the last second, then threw his own haymaker aimed squarely at the demon's eye. "Talk is cheap."

Lytch tumbled back, before scrabbling to his feet, nursing a black eye and charging again. No words this time, just a wordless, murderous roar.

"Okay, this is getting annoying, so why don't you. Just. Stay. DOWN!" Ranma snarled, throwing a punch with all his strength squarely into the demon's exposed throat. He would never have used such an attack against a human opponent, but against a demon of this breed, and tough even for that? It would certainly knock them out cold, even if it wouldn't kill him.

He was proved right as the punch caused the Hulk to smash into a wall and slump to the ground clutching his throat, coughing roughly and spluttering curses and expletives, many of them bordering on magical from the way a nearby puddle suddenly transformed into boiling phlegm.

Ranma felt a grudging respect for this demon. Even _Ryoga_ couldn't have taken a blow like that with so little effect. Still, best to put an end to this now; he did _not_ want to let this demon get up again. Not bothering to call out the training he had taken and made his own, he surged forward and became a tidal wave of punches and kicks, blows too fast for even demon eyes to follow hammering on the softest spots of the demon's anatomy that he could detect, hundreds of blows turning into thousands, the air thick with the meaty smack of fist on flesh before Lytch finally collapsed with an anguished groan and lay still. Lungs heaving from the strain, Ranma wiped the sweat from his brow with one clenched fist and menaced the still-watching muggers.

"Who wants some next?" He snarled.

There was silence for a few minutes, before a head landed between the group and prompted some stares. Ranma quirked an eyebrow before suddenly the demons paled, "Shit, it's a game of Head Toss! Leg it!"

Ranma didn't even have time to ask when he heard the roar of an approaching mob and felt his jaw drop at the sight of the incoming horde approaching from nearly every street. Grabbing the stunned Hulk, Ranma considered his options and, quick as a flash, dragged the demon with him down a tight alleyway. Oblivious in equal measures to both their presence and their disappearance, the whooping, shrieking, jeering, cheering crowd grabbed the head and the game resumed again, the streets shuddering with the stampede of demonic feet.

Poking his head out of the alleyway, Ranma watched as street cleared up, leaving nothing but dust in the wake of the game and its players.

Head Toss, Ranma would later discover, was a particularly brutal form of game popular in Hell. An unlucky victim, normally a damned soul of course, was torn into lots of different pieces and scattered over a certain area. Players would then fight to collect the most body parts, with the name coming because the head was the worth the most points. Whoever lived through the contest with the most points, won. As Ranma shook his head, just glad to be alive, he heard a grunt from behind him and turned with a disbelieving expression to see that, yes, Lytch was indeed sitting back up again. What the _fuck_ was this thing made out of? **Happosai** would have been out cold longer after the beating Ranma had just dished out!

"Hrrmm, you've got a mean punch, I'll give you that mortal. So, any reason why you saved me from the Head Toss?"

Ranma glanced back. "I ain't a charity service, you owe me. Got that?"

As the demon nodded in agreement, confirming a Covenant between the two, Ranma walked back out into the street. A few moments, he hopped back up the rooftops and began racing to find some sort of shelter; he had enough fun today.

He was back at the spot where the whole adventure had started and about to take a nap when an Imp landed next to him, adorned in the livery that marked it as one of Baron Zenisky's personal servants. "Ranma Saotome, the Baron summons you to the mansion for an important matter."

Ranma nodded and got to his feet. "All right, I'm on my way." Taking a brief moment to stretch his legs again, Ranma started hopping and leaping across the rooftops towards the mansion of Baron Zenisky.

"Looks like my vacation's over. Back to work."

_We hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into Ranma's "everyday life" in the Infernum. As always, suggestions for characters for Ranma to interact with and plot seeds are most welcome; we have our path charted, but it's those interesting little stops along the way that make the story really work._


End file.
